The Effects of Globalization Phenomena on Educational Concepts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schrottner, Barbara Theresia

2010-01-01

It is becoming more and more apparent that globalization processes represent, theoretically as well as practically, a challenge for educational sciences and therefore, it must be addressed within the sphere of education. Accordingly, educational conceptions have to adapt to globalization phenomena and focus more on alternative and innovative…

The Infusion of Socio-Humanistic Concepts into Engineering Courses via Horizontal Integration of Subject Matter.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huckaba, Charles E.; Griffin, Ann

1983-01-01

Describes development of an interdisciplinary engineering course called "Social Aspects of the Technical Decision Process." Course content includes such interdisciplinary topics as alternative energy, ecology, and urban planning, which represent traditional engineering concepts. However, social and historical dimensions are built into topics.…

Identification of Threshold Concepts for Biochemistry

PubMed Central

Green, David; Lewis, Jennifer E.; Lin, Sara; Minderhout, Vicky

2014-01-01

Threshold concepts (TCs) are concepts that, when mastered, represent a transformed understanding of a discipline without which the learner cannot progress. We have undertaken a process involving more than 75 faculty members and 50 undergraduate students to identify a working list of TCs for biochemistry. The process of identifying TCs for biochemistry was modeled on extensive work related to TCs across a range of disciplines and included faculty workshops and student interviews. Using an iterative process, we prioritized five concepts on which to focus future development of instructional materials. Broadly defined, the concepts are steady state, biochemical pathway dynamics and regulation, the physical basis of interactions, thermodynamics of macromolecular structure formation, and free energy. The working list presented here is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather is meant to identify a subset of TCs for biochemistry for which instructional and assessment tools for undergraduate biochemistry will be developed. PMID:25185234

Executive Leadership Concepts for Higher Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Satterlee, Brian

Several key concepts shed light on the traits and processes of leadership in educational settings. First, the term leadership can be understood as the act of persuading others to set aside individual concerns and pursue a common goal, with communication representing a key ability of leaders. The Communication Model provides a useful, open systems…

Computational Features of Flow Modeling in Nanostructured Sensors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ionescu, Adela; Savu, Dan; Savu, Sorin; Coman, Daniela

2009-04-01

Nowadays the productivity of the welding processes represents an important factor in economy concepts. The technologies which are developed by the researchers are oriented to the increasing of the welding processes' productivity and to the improvement of the products' quality.

Re-Presenting the Social Construction of Science in Light of the Propositions of Bruno Latour: For a Renewal of the School Conception of Science in Secondary Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richard, Vincent; Bader, Barbara

2010-01-01

Current opinion holds that school science has not been producing the expected outcomes. Highlighted by a considerable body of research, one of the concerns is that young people still mobilize a naive conception of science. Consequently, we must pursue the reflection process concerning ways of renewing the school conception of science so as to…

MODIS information, data and control system (MIDACS) operations concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Han, D.; Salomonson, V.; Ormsby, J.; Ardanuy, P.; Mckay, A.; Hoyt, D.; Jaffin, S.; Vallette, B.; Sharts, B.; Folta, D.

1988-01-01

The MODIS Information, Data, and Control System (MIDACS) Operations Concepts Document provides a basis for the mutual understanding between the users and the designers of the MIDACS, including the requirements, operating environment, external interfaces, and development plan. In defining the concepts and scope of the system, how the MIDACS will operate as an element of the Earth Observing System (EOS) within the EosDIS environment is described. This version follows an earlier release of a preliminary draft version. The individual operations concepts for planning and scheduling, control and monitoring, data acquisition and processing, calibration and validation, data archive and distribution, and user access do not yet fully represent the requirements of the data system needed to achieve the scientific objectives of the MODIS instruments and science teams. The teams are not yet formed; however, it is possible to develop the operations concepts based on the present concept of EosDIS, the level 1 and level 2 Functional Requirements Documents, and through interviews and meetings with key members of the scientific community. The operations concepts were exercised through the application of representative scenarios.

Representing Swiss Vocational Education and Training Teachers' Domain-Specific Conceptions of Financial Literacy Using Concept Maps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leumann, Seraina

2017-01-01

Issues related to financial matters are an integral component of the curricula in vocational education and training in Switzerland. However, the differences between students' competences are caused not only by the curricula but by multiple factors. One key factor is teachers' characteristics that support successful learning processes. Teachers'…

Kindergarten and Primary School Children's Everyday, Synthetic, and Scientific Concepts of Clouds and Rainfall

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Malleus, Elina; Kikas, Eve; Marken, Tiivi

2017-06-01

The purpose of this research was to explore children's understandings of everyday, synthetic and scientific concepts to enable a description of how abstract, verbally taught material relates to previous experience-based knowledge and the consistency of understanding about cloud formation. This study examined the conceptual understandings of cloud formation and rain in kindergarten (age 5-7), second (age 8-9) and fourth (age 10-11) grade children, who were questioned on the basis of structured interview technique. In order to represent consistency in children's answers, three different types of clouds were introduced (a cirrus cloud, a cumulus cloud, and a rain cloud). Our results indicate that children in different age groups gave a similarly high amount of synthetic answers, which suggests the need for teachers to understand the formation process of different misconceptions to better support the learning process. Even children in kindergarten may have conceptions that represent different elements of scientific understanding and misconceptions cannot be considered age-specific. Synthetic understanding was also shown to be more consistent (not depending on cloud type) suggesting that gaining scientific understanding requires the reorganisation of existing concepts, that is time-consuming. Our results also show that the appearance of the cloud influences children's answers more in kindergarten where they mostly related rain cloud formation with water. An ability to create abstract connections between different concepts should also be supported at school as a part of learning new scientific information in order to better understand weather-related processes.

On knowledge transfer management as a learning process for ad hoc teams

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Iliescu, D.

2017-08-01

Knowledge management represents an emerging domain becoming more and more important. Concepts like knowledge codification and personalisation, knowledge life-cycle, social and technological dimensions, knowledge transfer and learning management are integral parts. Focus goes here in the process of knowledge transfer for the case of ad hoc teams. The social dimension of knowledge transfer plays an important role. No single individual actors involved in the process, but a collective one, representing the organisation. It is critically important for knowledge to be managed from the life-cycle point of view. A complex communication network needs to be in place to supports the process of knowledge transfer. Two particular concepts, the bridge tie and transactive memory, would eventually enhance the communication. The paper focuses on an informational communication platform supporting the collaborative work on knowledge transfer. The platform facilitates the creation of a topic language to be used in knowledge modelling, storage and reuse, by the ad hoc teams.

The MP (Materialization Pattern) Model for Representing Math Educational Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Choi, Namyoun; Song, Il-Yeol; An, Yuan

Representing natural languages with UML has been an important research issue for various reasons. Little work has been done for modeling imperative mood sentences which are the sentence structure of math educational standard statements. In this paper, we propose the MP (Materialization Pattern) model that captures the semantics of English sentences used in math educational standards. The MP model is based on the Reed-Kellogg sentence diagrams and creates MP schemas with the UML notation. The MP model explicitly represents the semantics of the sentences by extracting math concepts and the cognitive process of math concepts from math educational standard statements, and simplifies modeling. This MP model is also developed to be used for aligning math educational standard statements via schema matching.

Thinking processes of Filipino teachers representation of schema of some biology topics: Its effects to the students conceptual understanding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barquilla, Manuel B.

2018-01-01

This study is a qualitative-quantitative research, where the main concern is to investigate Content knowledge representation of Filipino Teachers in their schema (proposition, linear ordering and imagery) of some biology topics. The five biology topics includes: Photosynthesis, Cellular Respiration, human reproductive system, Mendelian genetics and NonMendelian genetics. The study focuses on the six (6) biology teachers and a total of 222 students in their respective classes. Of the Six (6) teachers, three (3) are under the Science curriculum and three (3) under regular curriculum in both public and private schools in Iligan city and Lanao del Norte, Philippines. The study utilizes interpretative case-study method, bracketing method, and concept analysis for qualitative part. For quantitative, it uses a nonparametric statistical tool, Kendall's Tau to determine congruence of students and teachers' concept maps and paired t-test for testing the significant differences of pre-and post-instruction concept maps to determine the effects of students' conceptual understanding before and after the teacher's representation of their schema that requires the teachers' thinking processes. The data were cross-validated with two or more techniques used in the study. The data collection entailed seven (7) months immersion: one (1) month for preliminary phase for the researcher to gain teachers' and students' confidence and the succeeding six (6) months for main observation and data collection. Results indicate that the teacher utilize six methods to construct meaning of concepts, three methods of representing classification, four methods to represent relationships, seven methods to represent transformation and three methods to represent causation in planning and implementing the lessons. They often modify definitions in the textbook and express these in lingua franca to be better understood by the students. Furthermore, the teachers' analogs given to student are sometimes far from the things, objects, events or processes being compared to. This suggests that teachers sometimes provide the condition for students' developing alternative conception through analogy/metaphors that they give. Also, the results suggest that there is significant differences between the pre and post instruction mean scores of concept maps before and after the teacher representation of their schema. Moreover, most of the topic (photosynthesis, human reproductive system, Mendelian and non-Mendelian genetics) studied have moderately or substantial to high agreement between the two groups. Hence, suggest that the teachers' representation highly influence student conceptual.

Deep evolutionary origins of neurobiology

PubMed Central

Mancuso, Stefano

2009-01-01

It is generally assumed, both in common-sense argumentations and scientific concepts, that brains and neurons represent late evolutionary achievements which are present only in more advanced animals. Here we overview recently published data clearly revealing that our understanding of bacteria, unicellular eukaryotic organisms, plants, brains and neurons, rooted in the Aristotelian philosophy is flawed. Neural aspects of biological systems are obvious already in bacteria and unicellular biological units such as sexual gametes and diverse unicellular eukaryotic organisms. Altogether, processes and activities thought to represent evolutionary ‘recent’ specializations of the nervous system emerge rather to represent ancient and fundamental cell survival processes. PMID:19513267

The Affordances of Blogs and Digital Video: New Potentials for Exploring Topics and Representing Meaning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ranker, Jason

2015-01-01

In this article, the author presents examples of two ninth-grade students' literacy processes as they used blogs and digital video (amongst other media) to inquire into the subject matter of fast food. The author discusses the students' uses of these focal media through the concept of affordances, a concept that refers to the distinct…

Experiments in concept modeling for radiographic image reports.

PubMed Central

Bell, D S; Pattison-Gordon, E; Greenes, R A

1994-01-01

OBJECTIVE: Development of methods for building concept models to support structured data entry and image retrieval in chest radiography. DESIGN: An organizing model for chest-radiographic reporting was built by analyzing manually a set of natural-language chest-radiograph reports. During model building, clinician-informaticians judged alternative conceptual structures according to four criteria: content of clinically relevant detail, provision for semantic constraints, provision for canonical forms, and simplicity. The organizing model was applied in representing three sample reports in their entirety. To explore the potential for automatic model discovery, the representation of one sample report was compared with the noun phrases derived from the same report by the CLARIT natural-language processing system. RESULTS: The organizing model for chest-radiographic reporting consists of 62 concept types and 17 relations, arranged in an inheritance network. The broadest types in the model include finding, anatomic locus, procedure, attribute, and status. Diagnoses are modeled as a subtype of finding. Representing three sample reports in their entirety added 79 narrower concept types. Some CLARIT noun phrases suggested valid associations among subtypes of finding, status, and anatomic locus. CONCLUSIONS: A manual modeling process utilizing explicitly stated criteria for making modeling decisions produced an organizing model that showed consistency in early testing. A combination of top-down and bottom-up modeling was required. Natural-language processing may inform model building, but algorithms that would replace manual modeling were not discovered. Further progress in modeling will require methods for objective model evaluation and tools for formalizing the model-building process. PMID:7719807

Space station automation study. Automation requirements derived from space manufacturing concepts. Volume 1: Executive summary

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1984-01-01

The two manufacturing concepts developed represent innovative, technologically advanced manufacturing schemes. The concepts were selected to facilitate an in depth analysis of manufacturing automation requirements in the form of process mechanization, teleoperation and robotics, and artificial intelligence. While the cost effectiveness of these facilities has not been analyzed as part of this study, both appear entirely feasible for the year 2000 timeframe. The growing demand for high quality gallium arsenide microelectronics may warrant the ventures.

Power relations and contrasting conceptions of evidence in patient-involvement processes used to inform health funding decisions in Australia.

PubMed

Lopes, Edilene; Carter, Drew; Street, Jackie

2015-06-01

We collected and analysed views of key stakeholders on the processes used to involve patient organisations in health care funding decision making in Australia. We conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with patient organisation representatives and members of Advisory Committees that provide advice to the Australian Department of Health and employ Health Technology Assessment (HTA) as an evaluation framework. Using two theoretical frameworks, we analysed structural and contextual elements pertaining to the involvement processes. The findings reported in this article relate to interviewees' perspectives on contextual elements, analysed using a Foucauldian lens. These elements include: the perspectives of marginalised voices; the diversity of views on what ought to be considered valid evidence in a HTA setting; and the relationships between stakeholders, along with how these relationships impact on involvement processes and the outcomes of those processes. The findings demonstrate that the involvement processes currently used are deemed inadequate by both patient organisation representatives and Advisory Committee members, but for different reasons connected to how different stakeholders conceptualise evidence. Advisory Committee members viewed evidence as encompassing clinical outcomes and patient preferences, whereas patient organisation representatives tended to view evidence as encompassing aspects not directly related to a disease entity, such as the social and emotional aspects of patients' experiences in living with illness. Patient organisation representatives reported interacting with other stakeholders (especially industry) to increase the influence of their conception of evidence on decision making. The use of this strategy by interviewees illustrates how power struggles occur in government decision-making processes which involve both medical expertise and patients' accounts. Such struggles, and the power differentials they reflect, need to be considered by those responsible for designing and implementing meaningful public- and patient-involvement processes. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facilitating an Elementary Engineering Design Process Module

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hill-Cunningham, P. Renee; Mott, Michael S.; Hunt, Anna-Blair

2018-01-01

STEM education in elementary school is guided by the understanding that engineering represents the application of science and math concepts to make life better for people. The Engineering Design Process (EDP) guides the application of creative solutions to problems. Helping teachers understand how to apply the EDP to create lessons develops a…

Reading the Writing Process: Toward a Theory of Current Pedagogies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lynn, Steven

1987-01-01

Examines the representative conceptions of process pedagogy in (1) Maxine Hairston's article, "The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing"; (2) C.H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon's "Rhetorical Traditions and the Teaching of Writing"; and (3) Ann E. Berthoff's "Forming, Thinking, Writing: The…

De-implementation: A concept analysis.

PubMed

Upvall, Michele J; Bourgault, Annette M

2018-04-25

The purpose of this concept analysis is to explore the meaning of de-implementation and provide a definition that can be used by researchers and clinicians to facilitate evidence-based practice. De-implementation is a relatively unknown process overshadowed by the novelty of introducing new ideas and techniques into practice. Few studies have addressed the challenge of de-implementation and the cognitive processes involved when terminating harmful or unnecessary practices. Also, confusion exists regarding the myriad of terms used to describe de-implementation processes. Walker and Avant's method (2011) for describing concepts was used to clarify de-implementation. A database search limited to academic journals yielded 281 publications representing basic research, study protocols, and editorials/commentaries from implementation science experts. After applying exclusion criterion of English language only and eliminating overlap between databases, 41 articles were selected for review. Literature review and synthesis provided a concept analysis and a distinct definition of de-implementation. De-implementation was defined as the process of identifying and removing harmful, non-cost-effective, or ineffective practices based on tradition and without adequate scientific support. The analysis provided further refinement of de-implementation as a significant concept for ongoing theory development in implementation science and clinical practice. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Telemetry packetization for improved mission operations. [instrument packages for Space Shuttle mission operations data management

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Greene, E. P.

1976-01-01

The requirements for mission-operations data management will accelerate sharply when the Space Transportation System (i.e., Space Shuttle) becomes the primary vehicle for research from space. These demands can be satisfied most effectively by providing a higher-level source encoding function within the spaceborne vehicle. An Instrument Telemetry Packet (ITP) concept is described which represents an alternative to the conventional multiplexed telemetry frame approach for acquiring spaceborne instrument data. By providing excellent data-integrity protection at the source and a variable instrument bandwidth capability, this ITP concept represents a significant improvement over present data acquisition procedures. Realignments in the ground telemetry processing functions are described which are intended to take advantage of the ITP concept and to make the data management system more responsive to the scientific investigators.

Advanced space system concepts and their orbital support needs (1980 - 2000). Volume 1: Executive summary

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bekey, I.; Mayer, H. L.; Wolfe, M. G.

1976-01-01

The likely system concepts which might be representative of NASA and DoD space programs in the 1980-2000 time period were studied along with the programs' likely needs for major space transportation vehicles, orbital support vehicles, and technology developments which could be shared by the military and civilian space establishments in that time period. Such needs could then be used by NASA as an input in determining the nature of its long-range development plan. The approach used was to develop a list of possible space system concepts (initiatives) in parallel with a list of needs based on consideration of the likely environments and goals of the future. The two lists thus obtained represented what could be done, regardless of need; and what should be done, regardless of capability, respectively. A set of development program plans for space application concepts was then assembled, matching needs against capabilities, and the requirements of the space concepts for support vehicles, transportation, and technology were extracted. The process was pursued in parallel for likely military and civilian programs, and the common support needs thus identified.

Investigating adaptive reasoning and strategic competence: Difference male and female

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Syukriani, Andi; Juniati, Dwi; Siswono, Tatag Yuli Eko

2017-08-01

The series of adaptive reasoning and strategic competencies represent the five components of mathematical proficiency to describe the students' mathematics learning success. Gender contribute to the problem-solving process. This qualitative research approach investigated the adaptive reasoning and strategic competence aspects of a male student and a female student when they solved mathematical problem. They were in the eleventh grade of high school in Makassar. Both also had similar mathematics ability and were in the highest category. The researcher as the main instrument used secondary instrument to obtain the appropriate subject and to investigate the aspects of adaptive reasoning and strategic competence. Test of mathematical ability was used to locate the subjects with similar mathematical ability. The unstructured guideline interview was used to investigate aspects of adaptive reasoning and strategic competence when the subject completed the task of mathematical problem. The task of mathematical problem involves several concepts as the right solution, such as the circle concept, triangle concept, trigonometry concept, and Pythagoras concept. The results showed that male and female subjects differed in applying a strategy to understand, formulate and represent the problem situation. Furthermore, both also differed in explaining the strategy used and the relationship between concepts and problem situations.

Emerging concepts for management of river ecosystems and challenges to applied integration of physical and biological sciences in the Pacific Northwest, USA

USGS Publications Warehouse

Rieman, Bruce; Dunham, Jason B.; Clayton, James

2006-01-01

Integration of biological and physical concepts is necessary to understand and conserve the ecological integrity of river systems. Past attempts at integration have often focused at relatively small scales and on mechanistic models that may not capture the complexity of natural systems leaving substantial uncertainty about ecological responses to management actions. Two solutions have been proposed to guide management in the face of that uncertainty: the use of “natural variability” in key environmental patterns, processes, or disturbance as a reference; and the retention of some areas as essentially unmanaged reserves to conserve and represent as much biological diversity as possible. Both concepts are scale dependent because dominant processes or patterns that might be referenced will change with scale. Context and linkages across scales may be as important in structuring biological systems as conditions within habitats used by individual organisms. Both ideas view the physical environment as a template for expression, maintenance, and evolution of ecological diversity. To conserve or restore a diverse physical template it will be important to recognize the ecologically important differences in physical characteristics and processes among streams or watersheds that we might attempt to mimic in management or represent in conservation or restoration reserves.

Mathematical methods to analysis of topology, functional variability and evolution of metabolic systems based on different decomposition concepts.

PubMed

Mrabet, Yassine; Semmar, Nabil

2010-05-01

Complexity of metabolic systems can be undertaken at different scales (metabolites, metabolic pathways, metabolic network map, biological population) and under different aspects (structural, functional, evolutive). To analyse such a complexity, metabolic systems need to be decomposed into different components according to different concepts. Four concepts are presented here consisting in considering metabolic systems as sets of metabolites, chemical reactions, metabolic pathways or successive processes. From a metabolomic dataset, such decompositions are performed using different mathematical methods including correlation, stiochiometric, ordination, classification, combinatorial and kinetic analyses. Correlation analysis detects and quantifies affinities/oppositions between metabolites. Stoichiometric analysis aims to identify the organisation of a metabolic network into different metabolic pathways on the hand, and to quantify/optimize the metabolic flux distribution through the different chemical reactions of the system. Ordination and classification analyses help to identify different metabolic trends and their associated metabolites in order to highlight chemical polymorphism representing different variability poles of the metabolic system. Then, metabolic processes/correlations responsible for such a polymorphism can be extracted in silico by combining metabolic profiles representative of different metabolic trends according to a weighting bootstrap approach. Finally evolution of metabolic processes in time can be analysed by different kinetic/dynamic modelling approaches.

An Investigation into the Processing of Lexicalized English Blend Words: Evidence from Lexical Decisions and Eye Movements during Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Juhasz, Barbara J.; Johnson, Rebecca L.; Brewer, Jennifer

2017-01-01

New words enter the language through several word formation processes [see Simonini ("Engl J" 55:752-757, 1966)]. One such process, blending, occurs when two source words are combined to represent a new concept (e.g., SMOG, BRUNCH, BLOG, and INFOMERCIAL). While there have been examinations of the structure of blends [see Gries…

Negotiating uncertainty: the transitional process of adapting to life with HIV.

PubMed

Perrett, Stephanie E; Biley, Francis C

2013-01-01

Glaser's (1978) grounded-theory method was used to investigate the transitional process of adapting to life with HIV. Semistructured interviews took place with 8 male HIV-infected participants recruited from a clinic in South Wales, United Kingdom. Data analysis used open, substantive, and theoretical coding. Adapting to a life with HIV infection emerged as a process of adapting to uncertainty with "negotiating uncertainty" as a core concept. Seven subcategories represented movements between bipolar opposites labeled "anticipating hopelessness" and "regaining optimism." This work progresses the theoretical concepts of transitions, uncertainty, and adaptation in relation to the HIV experience. Copyright © 2013 Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A concept of volume rendering guided search process to analyze medical data set.

PubMed

Zhou, Jianlong; Xiao, Chun; Wang, Zhiyan; Takatsuka, Masahiro

2008-03-01

This paper firstly presents an approach of parallel coordinates based parameter control panel (PCP). The PCP is used to control parameters of focal region-based volume rendering (FRVR) during data analysis. It uses a parallel coordinates style interface. Different rendering parameters represented with nodes on each axis, and renditions based on related parameters are connected using polylines to show dependencies between renditions and parameters. Based on the PCP, a concept of volume rendering guided search process is proposed. The search pipeline is divided into four phases. Different parameters of FRVR are recorded and modulated in the PCP during search phases. The concept shows that volume visualization could play the role of guiding a search process in the rendition space to help users to efficiently find local structures of interest. The usability of the proposed approach is evaluated to show its effectiveness.

Applying Schema Theory to Mass Media Information Processing: Moving toward a Formal Model.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wicks, Robert H.

Schema theory may be significant in determining if and how news audiences process information. For any given news topic, people have from none to many schemata (cognitive structures that represent organized knowledge about a given concept or type of stimulus abstracted from prior experience) upon which to draw. Models of how schemata are used…

Identifying UMLS concepts from ECG Impressions using KnowledgeMap

PubMed Central

Denny, Joshua C.; Spickard, Anderson; Miller, Randolph A; Schildcrout, Jonathan; Darbar, Dawood; Rosenbloom, S. Trent; Peterson, Josh F.

2005-01-01

Electrocardiogram (ECG) impressions represent a wealth of medical information for potential decision support and drug-effect discovery. Much of this information is inaccessible to automated methods in the free-text portion of the ECG report. We studied the application of the KnowledgeMap concept identifier (KMCI) to map Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) concepts from ECG impressions. ECGs were processed by KMCI and the results scored for accuracy by multiple raters. Reviewers also recorded unidentified concepts through the scoring interface. Overall, KMCI correctly identified 1059 out of 1171 concepts for a recall of 0.90. Precision, indicating the proportion of ECG concepts correctly identified, was 0.94. KMCI was particularly effective at identifying ECG rhythms (330/333), perfusion changes (65/66), and noncardiac medical concepts (11/11). In conclusion, KMCI is an effective method for mapping ECG impressions to UMLS concepts. PMID:16779029

The Role of Radiology in the Diagnostic Process: Information, Communication, and Teamwork.

PubMed

Larson, David B; Langlotz, Curtis P

2017-11-01

The diagnostic radiology process represents a partnership between clinical and radiology teams. As such, breakdowns in interpersonal interactions and communication can result in patient harm. We explore the role of radiology in the diagnostic process, focusing on key concepts of information and communication, as well as key interpersonal interactions of teamwork, collaboration, and collegiality, all based on trust. We propose 10 principles to facilitate effective information flow in the diagnostic process.

Contrasting Semantic versus Inhibitory Processing in the Angular Gyrus: An fMRI Study.

PubMed

Lewis, Gwyneth A; Poeppel, David; Murphy, Gregory L

2018-06-06

Recent studies of semantic memory have focused on dissociating the neural bases of two foundational components of human thought: taxonomic categories, which group similar objects like dogs and seals based on features, and thematic categories, which group dissimilar objects like dogs and leashes based on events. While there is emerging consensus that taxonomic concepts are represented in the anterior temporal lobe, there is disagreement over whether thematic concepts are represented in the angular gyrus (AG). We previously found AG sensitivity to both kinds of concepts; however, some accounts suggest that such activity reflects inhibition of irrelevant information rather than thematic activation. To test these possibilities, an fMRI experiment investigated both types of conceptual relations in the AG during two semantic judgment tasks. Each task trained participants to give negative responses (inhibition) or positive responses (activation) to word pairs based on taxonomic and thematic criteria of relatedness. Results showed AG engagement during both negative judgments and thematic judgments, but not during positive judgments about taxonomic pairs. Together, the results suggest that activity in the AG reflects functions that include both thematic (but not taxonomic) processing and inhibiting irrelevant semantic information.

Asynchronous Data Retrieval from an Object-Oriented Database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gilbert, Jonathan P.; Bic, Lubomir

We present an object-oriented semantic database model which, similar to other object-oriented systems, combines the virtues of four concepts: the functional data model, a property inheritance hierarchy, abstract data types and message-driven computation. The main emphasis is on the last of these four concepts. We describe generic procedures that permit queries to be processed in a purely message-driven manner. A database is represented as a network of nodes and directed arcs, in which each node is a logical processing element, capable of communicating with other nodes by exchanging messages. This eliminates the need for shared memory and for centralized control during query processing. Hence, the model is suitable for implementation on a multiprocessor computer architecture, consisting of large numbers of loosely coupled processing elements.

From actors to agents in socio-ecological systems models

PubMed Central

Rounsevell, M. D. A.; Robinson, D. T.; Murray-Rust, D.

2012-01-01

The ecosystem service concept has emphasized the role of people within socio-ecological systems (SESs). In this paper, we review and discuss alternative ways of representing people, their behaviour and decision-making processes in SES models using an agent-based modelling (ABM) approach. We also explore how ABM can be empirically grounded using information from social survey. The capacity for ABM to be generalized beyond case studies represents a crucial next step in modelling SESs, although this comes with considerable intellectual challenges. We propose the notion of human functional types, as an analogy of plant functional types, to support the expansion (scaling) of ABM to larger areas. The expansion of scope also implies the need to represent institutional agents in SES models in order to account for alternative governance structures and policy feedbacks. Further development in the coupling of human-environment systems would contribute considerably to better application and use of the ecosystem service concept. PMID:22144388

From actors to agents in socio-ecological systems models.

PubMed

Rounsevell, M D A; Robinson, D T; Murray-Rust, D

2012-01-19

The ecosystem service concept has emphasized the role of people within socio-ecological systems (SESs). In this paper, we review and discuss alternative ways of representing people, their behaviour and decision-making processes in SES models using an agent-based modelling (ABM) approach. We also explore how ABM can be empirically grounded using information from social survey. The capacity for ABM to be generalized beyond case studies represents a crucial next step in modelling SESs, although this comes with considerable intellectual challenges. We propose the notion of human functional types, as an analogy of plant functional types, to support the expansion (scaling) of ABM to larger areas. The expansion of scope also implies the need to represent institutional agents in SES models in order to account for alternative governance structures and policy feedbacks. Further development in the coupling of human-environment systems would contribute considerably to better application and use of the ecosystem service concept.

Near Identifiability of Dynamical Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hadaegh, F. Y.; Bekey, G. A.

1987-01-01

Concepts regarding approximate mathematical models treated rigorously. Paper presents new results in analysis of structural identifiability, equivalence, and near equivalence between mathematical models and physical processes they represent. Helps establish rigorous mathematical basis for concepts related to structural identifiability and equivalence revealing fundamental requirements, tacit assumptions, and sources of error. "Structural identifiability," as used by workers in this field, loosely translates as meaning ability to specify unique mathematical model and set of model parameters that accurately predict behavior of corresponding physical system.

Using concept mapping for assessing and promoting relational conceptual change in science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Xiufeng

2004-05-01

In this article, we adopted the relational conceptual change as our theoretical framework to accommodate current views of conceptual change such as ontological beliefs, epistemological commitment, and social/affective contexts commonly mentioned in the literature. We used a specific concept mapping format and process - digraphs and digraphing - as an operational framework for assessing and promoting relational conceptual change. We wanted to find out how concept mapping can be used to account for relational conceptual change. We collected data from a Grade 12 chemistry class using collaborative computerized concept mapping on an ongoing basis during a unit of instruction. Analysis of progressive concept maps and interview transcripts of representative students and the teacher showed that ongoing and collaborative computerized concept mapping is able to account for student conceptual change in ontological, epistemological, and social/affective domains.

Measurement and modeling of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity: Chapter 21

USGS Publications Warehouse

Perkins, Kim S.; Elango, Lakshmanan

2011-01-01

This chapter will discuss, by way of examples, various techniques used to measure and model hydraulic conductivity as a function of water content, K(). The parameters that describe the K() curve obtained by different methods are used directly in Richards’ equation-based numerical models, which have some degree of sensitivity to those parameters. This chapter will explore the complications of using laboratory measured or estimated properties for field scale investigations to shed light on how adequately the processes are represented. Additionally, some more recent concepts for representing unsaturated-zone flow processes will be discussed.

The use of multiple representations and visualizations in student learning of introductory physics: An example from work and energy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zou, Xueli

In the past three decades, physics education research has primarily focused on student conceptual understanding; little work has been conducted to investigate student difficulties in problem solving. In cognitive science and psychology, however, extensive studies have explored the differences in problem solving between experts and naive students. A major finding indicates that experts often apply qualitative representations in problem solving, but that novices use an equation-centered method. This dissertation describes investigations into the use of multiple representations and visualizations in student understanding and problem solving with the concepts of work and energy. A multiple-representation strategy was developed to help students acquire expertise in solving work-energy problems. In this approach, a typical work-energy problem is considered as a physical process. The process is first described in words-the verbal representation of the process. Next, a sketch or a picture, called a pictorial representation, is used to represent the process. This is followed by work-energy bar charts-a physical representation of the same processes. Finally, this process is represented mathematically by using a generalized work-energy equation. In terms of the multiple representations, the goal of solving a work- energy problem is to represent the physical process the more intuitive pictorial and diagrammatic physical representations. Ongoing assessment of student learning indicates that this multiple-representation technique is more effective than standard instruction methods in student problem solving. visualize this difficult-to-understand concept, a guided- inquiry learning activity using a pair of model carts and an experiment problem using a sandbag were developed. Assessment results have shown that these research-based materials are effective in helping students visualize this concept and give a pictorial idea of ``where the kinetic energy goes'' during inelastic collisions. The research and curriculum development was conducted in the context of the introductory calculus-based physics course. Investigations were carried out using common physics education research tools, including open-ended surveys, written test questions, and individual student interviews.

Human Factors Simulation in Construction Management Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jaeger, M.; Adair, D.

2010-01-01

Successful construction management depends primarily on the representatives of the involved construction project parties. In addition to effective application of construction management tools and concepts, human factors impact significantly on the processes of any construction management endeavour. How can human factors in construction management…

How Body Orientation Affects Concepts of Space, Time and Valence: Functional Relevance of Integrating Sensorimotor Experiences during Word Processing

PubMed Central

Ruiz Fernandez, Susana; Bury, Nils-Alexander; Gerjets, Peter; Fischer, Martin H.; Bock, Otmar L.

2016-01-01

The aim of the present study was to test the functional relevance of the spatial concepts UP or DOWN for words that use these concepts either literally (space) or metaphorically (time, valence). A functional relevance would imply a symmetrical relationship between the spatial concepts and words related to these concepts, showing that processing words activate the related spatial concepts on one hand, but also that an activation of the concepts will ease the retrieval of a related word on the other. For the latter, the rotation angle of participant’s body position was manipulated either to an upright or a head-down tilted body position to activate the related spatial concept. Afterwards participants produced in a within-subject design previously memorized words of the concepts space, time and valence according to the pace of a metronome. All words were related either to the spatial concept UP or DOWN. The results including Bayesian analyses show (1) a significant interaction between body position and words using the concepts UP and DOWN literally, (2) a marginal significant interaction between body position and temporal words and (3) no effect between body position and valence words. However, post-hoc analyses suggest no difference between experiments. Thus, the authors concluded that integrating sensorimotor experiences is indeed of functional relevance for all three concepts of space, time and valence. However, the strength of this functional relevance depends on how close words are linked to mental concepts representing vertical space. PMID:27812155

Consolidation of graphite thermoplastic textile preforms for primary aircraft structure

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Suarez, J.; Mahon, J.

1991-01-01

The use of innovative cost effective material forms and processes is being considered for fabrication of future primary aircraft structures. Processes that have been identified as meeting these goals are textile preforms that use resin transfer molding (RTM) and consolidation forming. The Novel Composites for Wing and Fuselage Applications (NCWFA) program has as its objective the integration of innovative design concepts with cost effective fabrication processes to develop damage-tolerant structures that can perform at a design ultimate strain level of 6000 micro-inch/inch. In this on-going effort, design trade studies were conducted to arrive at advanced wing designs that integrate new material forms with innovative structural concepts and cost effective fabrication methods. The focus has been on minimizing part count (mechanical fasteners, clips, number of stiffeners, etc.), by using cost effective textile reinforcement concepts that provide improved damage tolerance and out-of-plane load capability, low-cost resin transfer molding processing, and thermoplastic forming concepts. The fabrication of representative Y spars by consolidation methods will be described. The Y spars were fabricated using AS4 (6K)/PEEK 150g commingled angle interlock 0/90-degree woven preforms with +45-degree commingled plies stitched using high strength Toray carbon thread and processed by autoclave consolidation.

Aspects of Piaget's cognitive developmental psychology and neurobiology of psychotic disorders - an integrative model.

PubMed

Gebhardt, Stefan; Grant, Phillip; von Georgi, Richard; Huber, Martin T

2008-09-01

Psychological, neurobiological and neurodevelopmental approaches have frequently been used to provide pathogenic concepts on psychotic disorders. However, aspects of cognitive developmental psychology have hardly been considered in current models. Using a hypothesis-generating approach an integration of these concepts was conducted. According to Piaget (1896-1980), assimilation and accommodation as forms of maintenance and modification of cognitive schemata represent fundamental processes of the brain. In general, based on the perceived input stimuli, cognitive schemata are developed resulting in a conception of the world, the realistic validity and the actuality of which is still being controlled and modified by cognitive adjustment processes. In psychotic disorders, however, a disproportion of environmental demands and the ability to activate required neuronal adaptation processes occurs. We therefore hypothesize a failure of the adjustment of real and requested output patterns. As a consequence autonomous cognitive schemata are generated, which fail to adjust with reality resulting in psychotic symptomatology. Neurobiological, especially neuromodulatory and neuroplastic processes play a central role in these perceptive and cognitive processes. In conclusion, integration of cognitive developmental psychology into the existing pathogenic concepts of psychotic disorders leads to interesting insights into basic disease mechanisms and also guides future research in the cognitive neuroscience of such disorders.

Towards an ontological representation of morbidity and mortality in Description Logics.

PubMed

Santana, Filipe; Freitas, Fred; Fernandes, Roberta; Medeiros, Zulma; Schober, Daniel

2012-09-21

Despite the high coverage of biomedical ontologies, very few sound definitions of death can be found. Nevertheless, this concept has its relevance in epidemiology, such as for data integration within mortality notification systems. We here introduce an ontological representation of the complex biological qualities and processes that inhere in organisms transitioning from life to death. We further characterize them by causal processes and their temporal borders. Several representational difficulties were faced, mainly regarding kinds of processes with blurred or fiat borders that change their type in a continuous rather than discrete mode. Examples of such hard to grasp concepts are life, death and its relationships with injuries and diseases. We illustrate an iterative optimization of definitions within four versions of the ontology, so as to stress the typical problems encountered in representing complex biological processes. We point out possible solutions for representing concepts related to biological life cycles, preserving identity of participating individuals, i.e. for a patient in transition from life to death. This solution however required the use of extended description logics not yet supported by tools. We also focus on the interdependencies and need to change further parts if one part is changed. The axiomatic definition of mortality we introduce allows the description of biologic processes related to the transition from healthy to diseased or injured, and up to a final death state. Exploiting such definitions embedded into descriptions of pathogen transmissions by arthropod vectors, the complete sequence of infection and disease processes can be described, starting from the inoculation of a pathogen by a vector, until the death of an individual, preserving the identity of the patient.

[Shared decision-making and communication theory: grounding the tango].

PubMed

Kasper, Jürgen; Légaré, France; Scheibler, Fülöp; Geiger, Friedemann

2010-01-01

Shared decision-making (SDM) has the potential to overcome outdated social role models in the health care system. The concept, however, adheres to archaic epistemological assumptions as can be inferred from the rudimentary stage of the measurement methods used and from the information monopoly that the physician still holds in this concept. Advantages of an up-to-date model of knowledge for understanding and operationalising SDM are outlined. To this purpose, essential definitions of the concept are reflected in terms of epistemology. Accordingly, information emerges through a process of social construction. Likewise, interpersonal relations do not represent a static condition; rather, they develop anew with each interaction. Therefore, constructs suitable to focus on dyadic interaction processes can be used as indicators of sharing in SDM. Theories and methods of the interpersonal paradigm are advocated. Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier GmbH.

Novel Composites for Wing and Fuselage Applications. Task 1; Novel Wing Design Concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Suarez, J. A.; Buttitta, C.; Flanagan, G.; DeSilva, T.; Egensteiner, W.; Bruno, J.; Mahon, J.; Rutkowski, C.; Collins, R.; Fidnarick, R.;

[Verbal patient information through nurses--a case of stroke patients].

PubMed

Christmann, Elli; Holle, Regina; Schüssler, Dörte; Beier, Jutta; Dassen, Theo

2004-06-01

The article represents results of a theoretical work in the field of nursing education, with the topic: Verbal Patient Information through Nurses--A Case of Stroke Patients. The literature review and analysis show that there is a shortage in (stroke) patient information generally and a lack of successful concepts and strategies for the verbal (stroke) patient information through nurses in hospitals. The authors have developed a theoretical basis for health information as a nursing intervention and this represents a model of health information as a "communicational teach-and-learn process", which is of general application to all patients. The health information takes place as a separate nursing intervention within a non-public, face-to-face communication situation and in the steps-model of the nursing process. Health information is seen as a learning process for patients and nurses too. We consider learning as information production (constructivism) and information processing (cognitivism). Both processes are influenced by different factors and the illness-situation of patients, personality information content and the environment. For a successful health information output, it is necessary to take care of these aspects and this can be realized through a constructivational understanding of didactics. There is a need for an evaluation study to prove our concept of health information.

Autism: a transdiagnostic, dimensional, construct of reasoning?

PubMed

Aggernaes, Bodil

2018-03-01

The concept of autism has changed across time, from the Bleulerian concept, which defined it as one of several symptoms of dementia praecox, to the present-day concept representing a pervasive development disorder. The present theoretical contribution to this special issue of EJN on autism introduces new theoretical ideas and discusses them in light of selected prior theories, clinical examples, and recent empirical evidence. The overall aim is to identify some present challenges of diagnostic practice and autism research and to suggest new pathways that may help direct future research. Future research must agree on the definitions of core concepts such as autism and psychosis. A possible redefinition of the concept of autism may be a condition in which the rationale of an individual's behaviour differs qualitatively from that of the social environment due to characteristic cognitive impairments affecting reasoning. A broad concept of psychosis could focus on deviances in the experience of reality resulting from impairments of reasoning. In this light and consistent with recent empirical evidence, it may be appropriate to redefine dementia praecox as a developmental disorder of reasoning. A future challenge of autism research may be to develop theoretical models that can account for the impact of complex processes acting at the social level in addition to complex neurobiological and psychological processes. Such models could profit from a distinction among processes related to (i) basic susceptibility, (ii) adaptive processes and (iii) decompensating factors involved in the development of manifest illness. © 2017 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Plasticity in Memorial Networks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes-Roth, Barbara; Hayes-Roth, Frederick

1975-01-01

An adaptive network model is proposed to represent the structure and processing of knowledge. Accessibility of subjects' stored information was measured. Relationships exist among (a) frequency of verifying a test relation, (b) other relations involving concepts used to evaluate test relation, (c) frequency of verifying those relations. (CHK)

Free Radical Reactions in Food.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taub, Irwin A.

1984-01-01

Discusses reactions of free radicals that determine the chemistry of many fresh, processed, and stored foods. Focuses on reactions involving ascorbic acid, myoglobin, and palmitate radicals as representative radicals derived from a vitamin, metallo-protein, and saturated lipid. Basic concepts related to free radical structure, formation, and…

Ambivalence in Mother-Adult Child Relations: A Dyadic Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Willson, Andrea E.; Shuey, Kim M.; Elder, Glen H., Jr.; Wickrama, K. A. S.

2006-01-01

The concept of ambivalence represents an interactional process in which individuals evaluate social relations as simultaneously positive and negative. This study investigates ambivalence in interpersonal relations through an empirical analysis of relationships between aging mothers and their adult children from their joint perspectives. Multilevel…

Similarity and scale in catchment storm response

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wood, Eric F.; Sivapalan, Murugesu; Beven, Keith

1993-01-01

Until recently, very little progress had been made in understanding the relationship between small-scale variability of topography, soil, and rainfalls and the storm response seen at the catchment scale. The work reviewed here represents the first attempt at a systematic theoretical framework for such understanding in the context of surface runoff generation by different processes. The parameterization of hydrological processes over a range of scales is examined, and the concept of the 'representative elementary area' (REA) is introduced. The REA is a fundamental scale for catchment modeling at which continuum assumptions can be applied for the spatially variable controls and parameters, and spatial patterns no longer have to be considered explicitly. The investigation of scale leads into the concept of hydrologic similarity in which the effects of the environmental controls on runoff generation and flood frequency response be investigated independently of catchment scale. The paper reviews the authors' initial results and hopefully will motivate others to also investigate the issues of hydrologic scale and similarity.

Confronting, Representing, and Believing Counterintuitive Concepts: Navigating the Natural and the Supernatural.

PubMed

Lane, Jonathan D; Harris, Paul L

2014-03-01

Recent research shows that even preschoolers are skeptical; they frequently reject claims from other people when the claims conflict with their own perceptions and concepts. Yet, despite their skepticism, both children and adults come to believe in a variety of phenomena that defy their first-hand perceptions and intuitive conceptions of the world. In this review, we explore how children and adults acquire such concepts. We describe how a similar developmental process underlies mental representation of both the natural and the supernatural world, and we detail this process for two prominent supernatural counterintuitive ideas-God and the afterlife. In doing so, we highlight the fact that conceptual development does not always move in the direction of greater empirical truth, as described within naturalistic domains. We consider factors that likely help overcome skepticism and, in doing so, promote belief in counterintuitive phenomena. These factors include qualities of the learners, aspects of the context, qualities of the informants, and qualities of the information. © The Author(s) 2014.

Confronting, Representing, and Believing Counterintuitive Concepts: Navigating the Natural and the Supernatural

PubMed Central

Lane, Jonathan D.; Harris, Paul. L.

2014-01-01

Recent research shows that even preschoolers are skeptical; they frequently reject claims from other people when the claims conflict with their own perceptions and concepts. Yet, despite their skepticism, both children and adults come to believe in a variety of phenomena that defy their first-hand perceptions and intuitive conceptions of the world. In this review, we explore how children and adults acquire such concepts. We describe how a similar developmental process underlies mental representation of both the natural and the supernatural world, and we detail this process for two prominent supernatural counterintuitive ideas—God and the afterlife. In doing so, we highlight the fact that conceptual development does not always move in the direction of greater empirical truth, as described within naturalistic domains. We consider factors that likely help overcome skepticism, and in doing so promote belief in counterintuitive phenomena. These factors include qualities of the learners, aspects of the context, qualities of the informants, and qualities of the information. PMID:24683418

Space station operations management

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cannon, Kathleen V.

1989-01-01

Space Station Freedom operations management concepts must be responsive to the unique challenges presented by the permanently manned international laboratory. Space Station Freedom will be assembled over a three year period where the operational environment will change as significant capability plateaus are reached. First Element Launch, Man-Tended Capability, and Permanent Manned Capability, represent milestones in operational capability that is increasing toward mature operations capability. Operations management concepts are being developed to accomodate the varying operational capabilities during assembly, as well as the mature operational environment. This paper describes operations management concepts designed to accomodate the uniqueness of Space Station Freedoom, utilizing tools and processes that seek to control operations costs.

Space station automation study: Automation requirements derived from space manufacturing concepts. Volume 1: Executive summary

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1984-01-01

The electroepitaxial process and the Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) circuits (chips) facilities were chosen because each requires a very high degree of automation, and therefore involved extensive use of teleoperators, robotics, process mechanization, and artificial intelligence. Both cover a raw materials process and a sophisticated multi-step process and are therfore highly representative of the kinds of difficult operation, maintenance, and repair challenges which can be expected for any type of space manufacturing facility. Generic areas were identified which will require significant further study. The initial design will be based on terrestrial state-of-the-art hard automation. One hundred candidate missions were evaluated on the basis of automation portential and availability of meaning ful knowldege. The design requirements and unconstrained design concepts developed for the two missions are presented.

On Mathematical Proving

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stefaneas, Petros; Vandoulakis, Ioannis M.

2015-12-01

This paper outlines a logical representation of certain aspects of the process of mathematical proving that are important from the point of view of Artificial Intelligence. Our starting-point is the concept of proof-event or proving, introduced by Goguen, instead of the traditional concept of mathematical proof. The reason behind this choice is that in contrast to the traditional static concept of mathematical proof, proof-events are understood as processes, which enables their use in Artificial Intelligence in such contexts, in which problem-solving procedures and strategies are studied. We represent proof-events as problem-centered spatio-temporal processes by means of the language of the calculus of events, which captures adequately certain temporal aspects of proof-events (i.e. that they have history and form sequences of proof-events evolving in time). Further, we suggest a "loose" semantics for the proof-events, by means of Kolmogorov's calculus of problems. Finally, we expose the intented interpretations for our logical model from the fields of automated theorem-proving and Web-based collective proving.

Face-space: A unifying concept in face recognition research.

PubMed

Valentine, Tim; Lewis, Michael B; Hills, Peter J

2016-10-01

The concept of a multidimensional psychological space, in which faces can be represented according to their perceived properties, is fundamental to the modern theorist in face processing. Yet the idea was not clearly expressed until 1991. The background that led to the development of face-space is explained, and its continuing influence on theories of face processing is discussed. Research that has explored the properties of the face-space and sought to understand caricature, including facial adaptation paradigms, is reviewed. Face-space as a theoretical framework for understanding the effect of ethnicity and the development of face recognition is evaluated. Finally, two applications of face-space in the forensic setting are discussed. From initially being presented as a model to explain distinctiveness, inversion, and the effect of ethnicity, face-space has become a central pillar in many aspects of face processing. It is currently being developed to help us understand adaptation effects with faces. While being in principle a simple concept, face-space has shaped, and continues to shape, our understanding of face perception.

[Neurogenesis in the adult brain: the demise of a dogma and the advent of new treatments].

PubMed

Crespel, A; Baldy-Moulinier, M; Lerner Natoli, M

2004-12-01

Since the early sixties, many concepts concerning neurogenesis have been progressively ruled out. Proof of the persistence of a physiological neurogenesis in adult mammals, including humans, raised the concept of a unique precursor cell giving birth to neurons and glial cells. According to this concept, a real continuum between neuroepithelial cells, radial glia and astrocytes exists from the embryonic period to adult age and generates both neurons and glial cells. Different factors, either secreted in situ or transported by blood, can influence this physiological neurogenesis process. The targets and role of newborn neurons are not clearly understood. In pathological conditions (ischemia, epilepsy, lesions), the physiological neurogenesis process is enhanced; however the significance of this neurogenesis excess (beneficial or deleterious) is not completely known. Advances in understanding the regulation of neurogenesis in these different conditions represent hopes of new therapeutic procedures, not only by improving the control of differentiation and survival of transplanted stem cells, but also by the possibility of modifying the processes of "endogenous neurogenesis".

The Neuroscience of Group Membership

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morrison, Samantha; Decety, Jean; Molenberghs, Pascal

2012-01-01

The present study aimed to uncover the neural activity associated with specific in-group and out-group word related stimuli, to examine the neuroanatomical basis of group membership concept representation, and investigate to what extent neural processes represent "in-group" differently from "out-group". Participants' brain activity was measured…

Identification of threshold concepts for biochemistry.

PubMed

Loertscher, Jennifer; Green, David; Lewis, Jennifer E; Lin, Sara; Minderhout, Vicky

2014-01-01

Threshold concepts (TCs) are concepts that, when mastered, represent a transformed understanding of a discipline without which the learner cannot progress. We have undertaken a process involving more than 75 faculty members and 50 undergraduate students to identify a working list of TCs for biochemistry. The process of identifying TCs for biochemistry was modeled on extensive work related to TCs across a range of disciplines and included faculty workshops and student interviews. Using an iterative process, we prioritized five concepts on which to focus future development of instructional materials. Broadly defined, the concepts are steady state, biochemical pathway dynamics and regulation, the physical basis of interactions, thermodynamics of macromolecular structure formation, and free energy. The working list presented here is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather is meant to identify a subset of TCs for biochemistry for which instructional and assessment tools for undergraduate biochemistry will be developed. © 2014 J. Loertscher et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2014 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

Better models are more effectively connected models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nunes, João Pedro; Bielders, Charles; Darboux, Frederic; Fiener, Peter; Finger, David; Turnbull-Lloyd, Laura; Wainwright, John

2016-04-01

The concept of hydrologic and geomorphologic connectivity describes the processes and pathways which link sources (e.g. rainfall, snow and ice melt, springs, eroded areas and barren lands) to accumulation areas (e.g. foot slopes, streams, aquifers, reservoirs), and the spatial variations thereof. There are many examples of hydrological and sediment connectivity on a watershed scale; in consequence, a process-based understanding of connectivity is crucial to help managers understand their systems and adopt adequate measures for flood prevention, pollution mitigation and soil protection, among others. Modelling is often used as a tool to understand and predict fluxes within a catchment by complementing observations with model results. Catchment models should therefore be able to reproduce the linkages, and thus the connectivity of water and sediment fluxes within the systems under simulation. In modelling, a high level of spatial and temporal detail is desirable to ensure taking into account a maximum number of components, which then enables connectivity to emerge from the simulated structures and functions. However, computational constraints and, in many cases, lack of data prevent the representation of all relevant processes and spatial/temporal variability in most models. In most cases, therefore, the level of detail selected for modelling is too coarse to represent the system in a way in which connectivity can emerge; a problem which can be circumvented by representing fine-scale structures and processes within coarser scale models using a variety of approaches. This poster focuses on the results of ongoing discussions on modelling connectivity held during several workshops within COST Action Connecteur. It assesses the current state of the art of incorporating the concept of connectivity in hydrological and sediment models, as well as the attitudes of modellers towards this issue. The discussion will focus on the different approaches through which connectivity can be represented in models: either by allowing it to emerge from model behaviour or by parameterizing it inside model structures; and on the appropriate scale at which processes should be represented explicitly or implicitly. It will also explore how modellers themselves approach connectivity through the results of a community survey. Finally, it will present the outline of an international modelling exercise aimed at assessing how different modelling concepts can capture connectivity in real catchments.

One hundred years of return period: Strengths and limitations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Volpi, E.; Fiori, A.; Grimaldi, S.; Lombardo, F.; Koutsoyiannis, D.

2015-10-01

One hundred years from its original definition by Fuller, the probabilistic concept of return period is widely used in hydrology as well as in other disciplines of geosciences to give an indication on critical event rareness. This concept gains its popularity, especially in engineering practice for design and risk assessment, due to its ease of use and understanding; however, return period relies on some basic assumptions that should be satisfied for a correct application of this statistical tool. Indeed, conventional frequency analysis in hydrology is performed by assuming as necessary conditions that extreme events arise from a stationary distribution and are independent of one another. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the properties of return period when the independence condition is omitted; hence, we explore how the different definitions of return period available in literature affect results of frequency analysis for processes correlated in time. We demonstrate that, for stationary processes, the independence condition is not necessary in order to apply the classical equation of return period (i.e., the inverse of exceedance probability). On the other hand, we show that the time-correlation structure of hydrological processes modifies the shape of the distribution function of which the return period represents the first moment. This implies that, in the context of time-dependent processes, the return period might not represent an exhaustive measure of the probability of failure, and that its blind application could lead to misleading results. To overcome this problem, we introduce the concept of Equivalent Return Period, which controls the probability of failure still preserving the virtue of effectively communicating the event rareness.

Teamwork: a concept analysis.

PubMed

Xyrichis, Andreas; Ream, Emma

2008-01-01

This paper is a report of an analysis of the concept of teamwork. Teamwork is seen as an important facilitator in delivering quality healthcare services internationally. However, research studies of teamwork in health care are criticized for lacking a basic conceptual understanding of what this concept represents. A universal definition for healthcare settings and professionals is missing from published literature. Walker and Avant's approach was used to guide this concept analysis. Literature searches used bibliographic databases (Medline, CINAHL, Web of Science, Proquest CSA), internet search engines (GoogleScholar), and hand searches. Literature published between 1976 and 2006 was reviewed but only material in English was included. Based on the analysis undertaken, teamwork is proposed as a dynamic process involving two or more healthcare professionals with complementary backgrounds and skills, sharing common health goals and exercising concerted physical and mental effort in assessing, planning, or evaluating patient care. This is accomplished through interdependent collaboration, open communication and shared decision-making, and generates value-added patient, organizational and staff outcomes. Praising the value of teamwork without a common understanding of what this concept represents endangers both research into this way of working and its effective utilization in practice. The proposed definition helps reconcile discrepancies between how this concept is understood by nurses and doctors, as well as allied health professionals. A common understanding can facilitate communication in educational, research and clinical settings and is imperative for improving clarity and validity of future research.

Theory of sampling: four critical success factors before analysis.

PubMed

Wagner, Claas; Esbensen, Kim H

2015-01-01

Food and feed materials characterization, risk assessment, and safety evaluations can only be ensured if QC measures are based on valid analytical data, stemming from representative samples. The Theory of Sampling (TOS) is the only comprehensive theoretical framework that fully defines all requirements to ensure sampling correctness and representativity, and to provide the guiding principles for sampling in practice. TOS also defines the concept of material heterogeneity and its impact on the sampling process, including the effects from all potential sampling errors. TOS's primary task is to eliminate bias-generating errors and to minimize sampling variability. Quantitative measures are provided to characterize material heterogeneity, on which an optimal sampling strategy should be based. Four critical success factors preceding analysis to ensure a representative sampling process are presented here.

Attentional Factors in Conceptual Congruency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Santiago, Julio; Ouellet, Marc; Roman, Antonio; Valenzuela, Javier

2012-01-01

Conceptual congruency effects are biases induced by an irrelevant conceptual dimension of a task (e.g., location in vertical space) on the processing of another, relevant dimension (e.g., judging words' emotional evaluation). Such effects are a central empirical pillar for recent views about how the mind/brain represents concepts. In the present…

Probing the Natural World, Volume 1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burkman, Ernest

These materials represent the first third of a coordinated science program for grades seven through nine. The materials have been prepared according to the following Intermediate Science Curriculum Study rationale: (1) science at the junior-high-school level should serve a general education function, and (2) both processes and concepts should be…

Career Activities in Science: Grades 7-12.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sleep, Gerald; And Others

The curriculum guide attempts to assemble select activities that represent skills related to careers in science. These learning activities are designed to give junior and senior high school students opportunities to explore concepts and processes in many science-related careers. The broad areas covered are biology, chemistry, physics, and earth…

Who Makes the Most? Measuring the "Urban Environmental Virtuosity"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Romano, Oriana; Ercolano, Salvatore

2013-01-01

This paper advances a composite indicator called urban environmental virtuosity index (UEVI), in order to measure the efforts made by public local bodies in applying an ecosystem approach to urban management. UEVI employs the less exploited process-based selection criteria for representing the original concept of virtuosity, providing makes a…

Integrating Computational Science Tools into a Thermodynamics Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vieira, Camilo; Magana, Alejandra J.; García, R. Edwin; Jana, Aniruddha; Krafcik, Matthew

2018-01-01

Computational tools and methods have permeated multiple science and engineering disciplines, because they enable scientists and engineers to process large amounts of data, represent abstract phenomena, and to model and simulate complex concepts. In order to prepare future engineers with the ability to use computational tools in the context of…

Semantic similarity between old and new items produces false alarms in recognition memory.

PubMed

Montefinese, Maria; Zannino, Gian Daniele; Ambrosini, Ettore

2015-09-01

In everyday life, human beings can report memories of past events that did not occur or that occurred differently from the way they remember them because memory is an imperfect process of reconstruction and is prone to distortion and errors. In this recognition study using word stimuli, we investigated whether a specific operationalization of semantic similarity among concepts can modulate false memories while controlling for the possible effect of associative strength and word co-occurrence in an old-new recognition task. The semantic similarity value of each new concept was calculated as the mean cosine similarity between pairs of vectors representing that new concept and each old concept belonging to the same semantic category. Results showed that, compared with (new) low-similarity concepts, (new) high-similarity concepts had significantly higher probability of being falsely recognized as old, even after partialling out the effect of confounding variables, including associative relatedness and lexical co-occurrence. This finding supports the feature-based view of semantic memory, suggesting that meaning overlap and sharing of semantic features (which are greater when more similar semantic concepts are being processed) have an influence on recognition performance, resulting in more false alarms for new high-similarity concepts. We propose that the associative strength and word co-occurrence among concepts are not sufficient to explain illusory memories but is important to take into account also the effects of feature-based semantic relations, and, in particular, the semantic similarity among concepts.

Empirical evaluation of the Process Overview Measure for assessing situation awareness in process plants.

PubMed

Lau, Nathan; Jamieson, Greg A; Skraaning, Gyrd

2016-03-01

The Process Overview Measure is a query-based measure developed to assess operator situation awareness (SA) from monitoring process plants. A companion paper describes how the measure has been developed according to process plant properties and operator cognitive work. The Process Overview Measure demonstrated practicality, sensitivity, validity and reliability in two full-scope simulator experiments investigating dramatically different operational concepts. Practicality was assessed based on qualitative feedback of participants and researchers. The Process Overview Measure demonstrated sensitivity and validity by revealing significant effects of experimental manipulations that corroborated with other empirical results. The measure also demonstrated adequate inter-rater reliability and practicality for measuring SA in full-scope simulator settings based on data collected on process experts. Thus, full-scope simulator studies can employ the Process Overview Measure to reveal the impact of new control room technology and operational concepts on monitoring process plants. Practitioner Summary: The Process Overview Measure is a query-based measure that demonstrated practicality, sensitivity, validity and reliability for assessing operator situation awareness (SA) from monitoring process plants in representative settings.

Application of simplified Complexity Theory concepts for healthcare social systems to explain the implementation of evidence into practice.

PubMed

Chandler, Jacqueline; Rycroft-Malone, Jo; Hawkes, Claire; Noyes, Jane

2016-02-01

To examine the application of core concepts from Complexity Theory to explain the findings from a process evaluation undertaken in a trial evaluating implementation strategies for recommendations about reducing surgical fasting times. The proliferation of evidence-based guidance requires a greater focus on its implementation. Theory is required to explain the complex processes across the multiple healthcare organizational levels. This social healthcare context involves the interaction between professionals, patients and the organizational systems in care delivery. Complexity Theory may provide an explanatory framework to explain the complexities inherent in implementation in social healthcare contexts. A secondary thematic analysis of qualitative process evaluation data informed by Complexity Theory. Seminal texts applying Complexity Theory to the social context were annotated, key concepts extracted and core Complexity Theory concepts identified. These core concepts were applied as a theoretical lens to provide an explanation of themes from a process evaluation of a trial evaluating the implementation of strategies to reduce surgical fasting times. Sampled substantive texts provided a representative spread of theoretical development and application of Complexity Theory from late 1990's-2013 in social science, healthcare, management and philosophy. Five Complexity Theory core concepts extracted were 'self-organization', 'interaction', 'emergence', 'system history' and 'temporality'. Application of these concepts suggests routine surgical fasting practice is habituated in the social healthcare system and therefore it cannot easily be reversed. A reduction to fasting times requires an incentivised new approach to emerge in the surgical system's priority of completing the operating list. The application of Complexity Theory provides a useful explanation for resistance to change fasting practice. Its utility in implementation research warrants further attention and evaluation. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Investigation of virtual reality concept based on system analysis of conceptual series

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Romanova, A.; Shuklin, D. A.; Kalinkina, M. E.; Gotskaya, I. B.; Ponomarev, Y. E.

2018-05-01

The paper covers approaches to the definition of virtual reality from the point of view of the humanitarian sciences and technology. Each approach analyzing problems of concept perception of methods interpreted by representatives of philosophy, psychology and sociology is singled out. Terminological analysis of the basic concepts is carried out and their refinement is constructed in the process of comparing the concepts of virtuality and virtual reality. Using the analysis of selected sources, a number of singularity characteristics of the given concept are singled out and its definition is specified. Results consist in combining the interpretation of all approaches to determine the concept of virtual reality. Due to the use of a comprehensive approach to the definition of the investigated concept, which allows us to consider the object of research as a set of elements that are subject to study with the help of a corresponding set of methods, one can conclude that the concept under study is complex and multifaceted. The authors noted that virtual reality technologies have a flexible concept depending on the field of application.

Fast Adapting Ensemble: A New Algorithm for Mining Data Streams with Concept Drift

PubMed Central

Ortíz Díaz, Agustín; Ramos-Jiménez, Gonzalo; Frías Blanco, Isvani; Caballero Mota, Yailé; Morales-Bueno, Rafael

2015-01-01

The treatment of large data streams in the presence of concept drifts is one of the main challenges in the field of data mining, particularly when the algorithms have to deal with concepts that disappear and then reappear. This paper presents a new algorithm, called Fast Adapting Ensemble (FAE), which adapts very quickly to both abrupt and gradual concept drifts, and has been specifically designed to deal with recurring concepts. FAE processes the learning examples in blocks of the same size, but it does not have to wait for the batch to be complete in order to adapt its base classification mechanism. FAE incorporates a drift detector to improve the handling of abrupt concept drifts and stores a set of inactive classifiers that represent old concepts, which are activated very quickly when these concepts reappear. We compare our new algorithm with various well-known learning algorithms, taking into account, common benchmark datasets. The experiments show promising results from the proposed algorithm (regarding accuracy and runtime), handling different types of concept drifts. PMID:25879051

Comparison of complex and parsimonious model structures by means of a modular hydrological model concept

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Holzmann, Hubert; Massmann, Carolina

2015-04-01

A plenty of hydrological model types have been developed during the past decades. Most of them used a fixed design to describe the variable hydrological processes assuming to be representative for the whole range of spatial and temporal scales. This assumption is questionable as it is evident, that the runoff formation process is driven by dominant processes which can vary among different basins. Furthermore the model application and the interpretation of results is limited by data availability to identify the particular sub-processes, since most models were calibrated and validated only with discharge data. Therefore it can be hypothesized, that simpler model designs, focusing only on the dominant processes, can achieve comparable results with the benefit of less parameters. In the current contribution a modular model concept will be introduced, which allows the integration and neglection of hydrological sub-processes depending on the catchment characteristics and data availability. Key elements of the process modules refer to (1) storage effects (interception, soil), (2) transfer processes (routing), (3) threshold processes (percolation, saturation overland flow) and (4) split processes (rainfall excess). Based on hydro-meteorological observations in an experimental catchment in the Slovak region of the Carpathian mountains a comparison of several model realizations with different degrees of complexity will be discussed. A special focus is given on model parameter sensitivity estimated by Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach. Furthermore the identification of dominant processes by means of Sobol's method is introduced. It could be shown that a flexible model design - and even the simple concept - can reach comparable and equivalent performance than the standard model type (HBV-type). The main benefit of the modular concept is the individual adaptation of the model structure with respect to data and process availability and the option for parsimonious model design.

Configuration and Data Management Process and the System Safety Professional

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shivers, Charles Herbert; Parker, Nelson C. (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

This article presents a discussion of the configuration management (CM) and the Data Management (DM) functions and provides a perspective of the importance of configuration and data management processes to the success of system safety activities. The article addresses the basic requirements of configuration and data management generally based on NASA configuration and data management policies and practices, although the concepts are likely to represent processes of any public or private organization's well-designed configuration and data management program.

A conceptual model of incarcerated adolescent fatherhood: adolescent identity development and the concept of intersectionality.

PubMed

Shade, Kate; Kools, Susan; Weiss, Sandra J; Pinderhughes, Howard

2011-05-01

Little is known about teen fathers though they are found to be disproportionately represented among incarcerated youth. SOURCE USED: This article is developed from a qualitative pilot study of adolescent fathers in the justice system. The authors theorize about teen fathers and the process by which they accept, reject, or are "barriered" from a father identity and role. Adolescence as a developmental period during which an identity is forming is viewed in concert with the concept of hegemonic masculinity and the concept of intersectionality. Risk factors in childhood and adolescence complete the conceptual model through which incarcerated adolescent fathers can be examined. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A concept-based interactive biomedical image retrieval approach using visualness and spatial information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahman, Md M.; Antani, Sameer K.; Demner-Fushman, Dina; Thoma, George R.

2015-03-01

This paper presents a novel approach to biomedical image retrieval by mapping image regions to local concepts and represent images in a weighted entropy-based concept feature space. The term concept refers to perceptually distinguishable visual patches that are identified locally in image regions and can be mapped to a glossary of imaging terms. Further, the visual significance (e.g., visualness) of concepts is measured as Shannon entropy of pixel values in image patches and is used to refine the feature vector. Moreover, the system can assist user in interactively select a Region-Of-Interest (ROI) and search for similar image ROIs. Further, a spatial verification step is used as a post-processing step to improve retrieval results based on location information. The hypothesis that such approaches would improve biomedical image retrieval, is validated through experiments on a data set of 450 lung CT images extracted from journal articles from four different collections.

Concept-Based Curricula: A National Study of Critical Concepts.

PubMed

Brussow, Jennifer A; Roberts, Karin; Scaruto, Matthew; Sommer, Sheryl; Mills, Christine

2018-02-22

As nursing education struggles to address a rapidly changing health care system, overcrowded curricula, and an increased focus on clinical reasoning skills, many programs have adopted or transitioned to concept-based curricula (CBCs), which are structured around key concepts and exemplars. Despite CBC's promised benefits, the process of developing a CBC framework may pose a challenge to programs. To address this barrier, a national study was conducted to develop a representative list of concepts and exemplars. This initiative expands on prior work by suggesting a leveled approach to positioning exemplars within a curricular sequence.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.

A concept taxonomy and an instrument hierarchy: tools for establishing and evaluating the conceptual framework of a patient-reported outcome (PRO) instrument as applied to product labeling claims.

PubMed

Erickson, Pennifer; Willke, Richard; Burke, Laurie

2009-01-01

To facilitate development and evaluation of a PRO instrument conceptual framework, we propose two tools--a PRO concept taxonomy and a PRO instrument hierarchy. FDA's draft guidance on patient reported outcome (PRO) measures states that a clear description of the conceptual framework of an instrument is useful for evaluating its adequacy to support a treatment benefit claim for use in product labeling the draft guidance, however does not propose tools for establishing or evaluating a PRO instrument's conceptual framework. We draw from our review of PRO concepts and instruments that appear in prescription drug labeling approved in the United States from 1997 to 2007. We propose taxonomy terms that define relationships between PRO concepts, including "family,"compound concept," and "singular concept." Based on the range of complexity represented by the concepts, as defined by the taxonomy, we propose nine instrument orders for PRO measurement. The nine orders range from individual event counts to multi-item, multiscale instruments. This analysis of PRO concepts and instruments illustrates that the taxonomy and hierarchy are applicable to PRO concepts across a wide range of therapeutic areas and provide a basis for defining the instrument conceptual framework complexity. Although the utility of these tools in the drug development, review, and approval processes has not yet been demonstrated, these tools could be useful to improve communication and enhance efficiency in the instrument development and review process.

Concepts in context: Processing mental state concepts with internal or external focus involves different neural systems

PubMed Central

Oosterwijk, Suzanne; Mackey, Scott; Wilson-Mendenhall, Christine; Winkielman, Piotr; Paulus, Martin P.

2015-01-01

According to embodied cognition theories concepts are contextually-situated and grounded in neural systems that produce experiential states. This view predicts that processing mental state concepts recruits neural regions associated with different aspects of experience depending on the context in which people understand a concept. This neuroimaging study tested this prediction using a set of sentences that described emotional (e.g., fear, joy) and non-emotional (e.g., thinking, hunger) mental states with internal focus (i.e. focusing on bodily sensations and introspection) or external focus (i.e. focusing on expression and action). Consistent with our predictions, data suggested that the inferior frontal gyrus, a region associated with action representation, was engaged more by external than internal sentences. By contrast, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region associated with the generation of internal states, was engaged more by internal emotion sentences than external sentence categories. Similar patterns emerged when we examined the relationship between neural activity and independent ratings of sentence focus. Furthermore, ratings of emotion were associated with activation in the medial prefrontal cortex, whereas ratings of activity were associated with activation in the inferior frontal gyrus. These results suggest that mental state concepts are represented in a dynamic way, using context-relevant interoceptive and sensorimotor resources. PMID:25748274

Army Design Methodology: Commander’s Resource

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-02-01

Contracting Officer’s Representative and Subject Matter POC: Heather Wolters 14. ABSTRACT With the March 2010 publication of FM 5-0, The Operations...Process, the U.S. Army formally introduced Design into its doctrine (Headquarters; Department of the Army, 2010 ). Design is defined in FM 5-0 as ?a...traditional approach to operational planning. In March 2010 in FM 5-0: The Operations Process, the Army incorporated the concept of Design1 into doctrine

The left inferior frontal gyrus: A neural crossroads between abstract and concrete knowledge.

PubMed

Della Rosa, Pasquale Anthony; Catricalà, Eleonora; Canini, Matteo; Vigliocco, Gabriella; Cappa, Stefano F

2018-07-15

Evidence from both neuropsychology and neuroimaging suggests that different types of information are necessary for representing and processing concrete and abstract word meanings. Both abstract and concrete concepts, however, conjointly rely on perceptual, verbal and contextual knowledge, with abstract concepts characterized by low values of imageability (IMG) (low sensory-motor grounding) and low context availability (CA) (more difficult to contextualize). Imaging studies supporting differences between abstract and concrete concepts show a greater recruitment of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) for abstract concepts, which has been attributed either to the representation of abstract-specific semantic knowledge or to the request for more executive control than in the case of concrete concepts. We conducted an fMRI study on 27 participants, using a lexical decision task involving both abstract and concrete words, whose IMG and CA values were explicitly modelled in separate parametric analyses. The LIFG was significantly more activated for abstract than for concrete words, and a conjunction analysis showed a common activation for words with low IMG or low CA only in the LIFG, in the same area reported for abstract words. A regional template map of brain activations was then traced for words with low IMG or low CA, and BOLD regional time-series were extracted and correlated with the specific LIFG neural activity elicited for abstract words. The regions associated to low IMG, which were functionally correlated with LIFG, were mainly in the left hemisphere, while those associated with low CA were in the right hemisphere. Finally, in order to reveal which LIFG-related network increased its connectivity with decreases of IMG or CA, we conducted generalized psychophysiological interaction analyses. The connectivity strength values extracted from each region connected with the LIFG were correlated with specific LIFG neural activity for abstract words, and a regression analysis was conducted to highlight which areas recruited by low IMG or low CA predicted the greater activation of the IFG for abstract concepts. Only the left middle temporal gyrus/angular gyrus, known to be involved in semantic processing, was a significant predictor of LIFG activity differentiating abstract from concrete words. The results show that the abstract conceptual processing requires the interplay of multiple brain regions, necessary for both the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of abstract knowledge. The LIFG can be thus identified as the neural crossroads between different types of information equally necessary for representing processing and differentiating abstract concepts from concrete ones. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[In search for neurophysiological criteria of altered consciousness].

PubMed

Sviderskaia, N E

2002-01-01

Neurophysiological approaches to brain mechanisms of consciousness are discussed. The concept of spatial synchronization of nervous processes developed by M.N. Livanov is applied to neurophysiological analysis of higher brain functions. However, the spatial synchronization of brain potentials is only a condition for information processing and does not represent it as such. This imposes restrictions on conclusions about the neural mechanisms of consciousness. It is more adequate to use the concept of spatial synchronization in views of consciousness as a psychophysiological level along with sub- and superconsciousness in three-level structure of mind according to P.V. Simonov. Forms of consciousness interaction with other levels concern the problem of altered consciousness and may be reflected in various patterns of spatial organization of brain potentials.

A Strategy for Making Content Reading Successful: Grades 4-6.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alvermann, Donna E.; Boothby, Paula R.

A graphic organizer is a tree diagram that consists of vocabulary related to one particular concept. A modified version of a graphic organizer contains empty slots that represent missing information and actively involves students during the reading process as opposed to before or after. This modified graphic organizer can provide both the…

Citizenship Education as an Expression of Democratization and Nation-Building Processes in Russia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Piattoeva, Nelli

2005-01-01

Over the past several decades, interest in and attention to the concept of citizenship and citizenship education has increased throughout Europe. An insightful observer might distinguish two interlinked discourses in the arguments around citizenship. One, that the political citizenship mostly related to the functioning of representative democracy…

Students' Problem-Solving in Mechanics: Preference of a Process Based Model.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stavy, Ruth; And Others

Research in science and mathematics education has indicated that students often use inappropriate models for solving problems because they tend to mentally represent a problem according to surface features instead of referring to scientific concepts and features. The objective of the study reported in this paper was to determine whether 34 Israeli…

Adding Dimension to Evaluative Research Through the Use of Protocol Material.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tittle, Carol Kehr

A rationale and illustration of the use of original records or protocol materials in an evaluation research report are described. Records of school observations and audiotape transcripts were selected to represent the concepts or categories which were developed in the process of evaluation. These qualitative data were collected in a project which…

The Simbol-X Low Energy Detector

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lechner, Peter

2009-05-01

For the Low Energy Detector of Simbol-X a new type of active pixel sensor based on the integrated amplifier DEPFET has been developed. This concept combines large area, scalable pixel size, low noise, and ultra-fast readout. Flight representative prototypes have been processed with a performance matching the Simbol-X specifications and demonstrating the technology readiness.

Engaged Scholarship in the Academy: Reflections from the Margins

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Drame, Elizabeth R.; Martell, Sandra Toro; Mueller, Jennifer; Oxford, Raquel; Wisneski, Debora B.; Xu, Yaoying

2011-01-01

This paper represents a series of reflections on collective and individual efforts of diverse women scholars to reconcile alternative views of scholarship within the academy. We document our collective experience with embedding the concept of the "scholarship of engagement" in our practice of research, teaching, and service through a process of…

Growth in Mathematical Understanding: How Can We Characterise It and How Can We Represent It?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pirie, Susan; Kieren, Thomas

1994-01-01

Proposes a model for the growth of mathematical understanding based on the consideration of understanding as a whole, dynamic, leveled but nonlinear process. Illustrates the model using the concept of fractions. How to map the growth of understanding is explained in detail. (Contains 26 references.) (MKR)

[The function of a general concept of disease from an historical perspective].

PubMed

Hess, V; Herrn, R

2015-01-01

This article questions why medicine fails to provide a general concept of disease for use by doctors, patients and society because the lack of such a unified concept inhibits any definitive distinction between "deviant" and "disease". By providing an historical overview of the particularities related to this question the authors demonstrate that the ever-changing concepts of disease were not driven by the process through which medicine became a science. In contrast to naturalistic concepts of disease, anthropological, sociocultural and psychosomatic concepts are grounded in an understanding of disease that cannot be determined, described and categorized by pathology alone. As a consequence, disease can only be determined or defined in relation to social and scientific frames of reference, as illustrated by an example from the Berlin Nervenklinik (psychiatric clinic) in the early twentieth century. The ways in which the definition of a disease concept represents a normative interpretation can be observed. The authors of this paper argue for the acceptance of this normative definition as a matter of societal agreement. Consequently, transparency is required in the shaping of general disease concepts.

Challenges in assessing college students' conception of duality: the case of infinity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Babarinsa-Ochiedike, Grace Olutayo

Interpreting students' views of infinity posits a challenge for researchers due to the dynamic nature of the conception. There is diversity and variation among students' process-object perceptions. The fluctuations between students' views however reveal an undeveloped duality conception. This study examined college students' conception of duality in understanding and representing infinity with the intent to design strategies that could guide researchers in categorizing students' views of infinity into different levels. Data for the study were collected from N=238 college students enrolled in Calculus sequence courses (Pre-Calculus, Calculus I through Calculus III) at one of the southwestern universities in the U.S. using self-report questionnaires and semi-structured individual task-based interviews. Data was triangulated using multiple measures analyzed by three independent experts using self-designed coding sheets to assess students' externalization of the duality conception of infinity. Results of this study reveal that college students' experiences in traditional Calculus sequence courses are not supportive of the development of duality conception. On the contrary, it strengthens the singularity perspective on fundamental ideas of mathematics such as infinity. The study also found that coding and assessing college students' conception of duality is a challenging and complex process due to the dynamic nature of the conception that is task-dependent and context-dependent. Practical significance of the study is that it helps to recognize misconceptions and starts addressing them so students will have a more comprehensive view of fundamental mathematical ideas as they progress through the Calculus coursework sequence. The developed duality concept development framework called Action-Process-Object-Duality (APOD) adapted from the APOS theory could guide educators and researchers as they engage in assessing students' conception of duality. The results of this study could serve as a facilitating instrument to further analyze cognitive obstacles in college students' understanding of the infinity concept.

A sharp image or a sharp knife: norms for the modality-exclusivity of 774 concept-property items.

PubMed

van Dantzig, Saskia; Cowell, Rosemary A; Zeelenberg, René; Pecher, Diane

2011-03-01

According to recent embodied cognition theories, mental concepts are represented by modality-specific sensory-motor systems. Much of the evidence for modality-specificity in conceptual processing comes from the property-verification task. When applying this and other tasks, it is important to select items based on their modality-exclusivity. We collected modality ratings for a set of 387 properties, each of which was paired with two different concepts, yielding a total of 774 concept-property items. For each item, participants rated the degree to which the property could be experienced through five perceptual modalities (vision, audition, touch, smell, and taste). Based on these ratings, we computed a measure of modality exclusivity, the degree to which a property is perceived exclusively through one sensory modality. In this paper, we briefly sketch the theoretical background of conceptual knowledge, discuss the use of the property-verification task in cognitive research, provide our norms and statistics, and validate the norms in a memory experiment. We conclude that our norms are important for researchers studying modality-specific effects in conceptual processing.

KaBOB: ontology-based semantic integration of biomedical databases.

PubMed

Livingston, Kevin M; Bada, Michael; Baumgartner, William A; Hunter, Lawrence E

2015-04-23

The ability to query many independent biological databases using a common ontology-based semantic model would facilitate deeper integration and more effective utilization of these diverse and rapidly growing resources. Despite ongoing work moving toward shared data formats and linked identifiers, significant problems persist in semantic data integration in order to establish shared identity and shared meaning across heterogeneous biomedical data sources. We present five processes for semantic data integration that, when applied collectively, solve seven key problems. These processes include making explicit the differences between biomedical concepts and database records, aggregating sets of identifiers denoting the same biomedical concepts across data sources, and using declaratively represented forward-chaining rules to take information that is variably represented in source databases and integrating it into a consistent biomedical representation. We demonstrate these processes and solutions by presenting KaBOB (the Knowledge Base Of Biomedicine), a knowledge base of semantically integrated data from 18 prominent biomedical databases using common representations grounded in Open Biomedical Ontologies. An instance of KaBOB with data about humans and seven major model organisms can be built using on the order of 500 million RDF triples. All source code for building KaBOB is available under an open-source license. KaBOB is an integrated knowledge base of biomedical data representationally based in prominent, actively maintained Open Biomedical Ontologies, thus enabling queries of the underlying data in terms of biomedical concepts (e.g., genes and gene products, interactions and processes) rather than features of source-specific data schemas or file formats. KaBOB resolves many of the issues that routinely plague biomedical researchers intending to work with data from multiple data sources and provides a platform for ongoing data integration and development and for formal reasoning over a wealth of integrated biomedical data.

Comparison of resin film infusion, resin transfer molding, and consolidation of textile preforms for primary aircraft structure

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Suarez, J.; Dastin, S.

1992-01-01

Under NASA's Novel Composites for Wing and Fuselage Applications (NCWFA) Program, Grumman is developing innovative design concepts and cost-effective fabrication processes for damage-tolerant primary structures that can perform at a design ultimate strain level of 6000 micro-inch/inch. Attention has focused on the use of textile high-performance fiber-reinforcement concepts that provide improved damage tolerance and out-of-plane load capability, low-cost resin film infusion (RFI) and resin transfer molding (RTM) processes, and thermoplastic forming concepts. The fabrication of wing 'Y' spars by four different materials/processes methods is described: 'Y' spars fabricated using IM7 angle interlock 0/90 deg woven preforms with +/- 45 deg plies stitched with Toray high-strength graphite thread and processed using RFI and 3501-6 epoxy; 'Y' spars fabricated using G40-800 knitted/stitched preforms and processed using RFI and 3501-6 epoxy; 'Y' spars fabricated using G40-800 knitted/stitched preforms and processed using RTM and Tactix 123/H41 epoxy; and 'Y' spars fabricated using AS4(6k)/PEEK 150-g commingled angle interlock 0/90 deg woven preforms with +/- 45 deg commingled plies stitched using high-strength graphite thread and processed by consolidation. A comparison of the structural efficiency, processability, and projected acquisition cost of these representative spars is presented.

Towards a conceptual multi-agent-based framework to simulate the spatial group decision-making process

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ghavami, Seyed Morsal; Taleai, Mohammad

2017-04-01

Most spatial problems are multi-actor, multi-issue and multi-phase in nature. In addition to their intrinsic complexity, spatial problems usually involve groups of actors from different organizational and cognitive backgrounds, all of whom participate in a social structure to resolve or reduce the complexity of a given problem. Hence, it is important to study and evaluate what different aspects influence the spatial problem resolution process. Recently, multi-agent systems consisting of groups of separate agent entities all interacting with each other have been put forward as appropriate tools to use to study and resolve such problems. In this study, then in order to generate a better level of understanding regarding the spatial problem group decision-making process, a conceptual multi-agent-based framework is used that represents and specifies all the necessary concepts and entities needed to aid group decision making, based on a simulation of the group decision-making process as well as the relationships that exist among the different concepts involved. The study uses five main influencing entities as concepts in the simulation process: spatial influence, individual-level influence, group-level influence, negotiation influence and group performance measures. Further, it explains the relationship among different concepts in a descriptive rather than explanatory manner. To illustrate the proposed framework, the approval process for an urban land use master plan in Zanjan—a provincial capital in Iran—is simulated using MAS, the results highlighting the effectiveness of applying an MAS-based framework when wishing to study the group decision-making process used to resolve spatial problems.

A model for process representation and synthesis. Ph.D. Thesis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Thomas, R. H.

1971-01-01

The problem of representing groups of loosely connected processes is investigated, and a model for process representation useful for synthesizing complex patterns of process behavior is developed. There are three parts, the first part isolates the concepts which form the basis for the process representation model by focusing on questions such as: What is a process; What is an event; Should one process be able to restrict the capabilities of another? The second part develops a model for process representation which captures the concepts and intuitions developed in the first part. The model presented is able to describe both the internal structure of individual processes and the interface structure between interacting processes. Much of the model's descriptive power derives from its use of the notion of process state as a vehicle for relating the internal and external aspects of process behavior. The third part demonstrates by example that the model for process representation is a useful one for synthesizing process behavior patterns. In it the model is used to define a variety of interesting process behavior patterns. The dissertation closes by suggesting how the model could be used as a semantic base for a very potent language extension facility.

When Art Moves the Eyes: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study

PubMed Central

Massaro, Davide; Savazzi, Federica; Di Dio, Cinzia; Freedberg, David; Gallese, Vittorio; Gilli, Gabriella; Marchetti, Antonella

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate, using eye-tracking technique, the influence of bottom-up and top-down processes on visual behavior while subjects, naïve to art criticism, were presented with representational paintings. Forty-two subjects viewed color and black and white paintings (Color) categorized as dynamic or static (Dynamism) (bottom-up processes). Half of the images represented natural environments and half human subjects (Content); all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment conditions (Task) (top-down processes). Results on gazing behavior showed that content-related top-down processes prevailed over low-level visually-driven bottom-up processes when a human subject is represented in the painting. On the contrary, bottom-up processes, mediated by low-level visual features, particularly affected gazing behavior when looking at nature-content images. We discuss our results proposing a reconsideration of the definition of content-related top-down processes in accordance with the concept of embodied simulation in art perception. PMID:22624007

When art moves the eyes: a behavioral and eye-tracking study.

PubMed

Massaro, Davide; Savazzi, Federica; Di Dio, Cinzia; Freedberg, David; Gallese, Vittorio; Gilli, Gabriella; Marchetti, Antonella

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate, using eye-tracking technique, the influence of bottom-up and top-down processes on visual behavior while subjects, naïve to art criticism, were presented with representational paintings. Forty-two subjects viewed color and black and white paintings (Color) categorized as dynamic or static (Dynamism) (bottom-up processes). Half of the images represented natural environments and half human subjects (Content); all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment conditions (Task) (top-down processes). Results on gazing behavior showed that content-related top-down processes prevailed over low-level visually-driven bottom-up processes when a human subject is represented in the painting. On the contrary, bottom-up processes, mediated by low-level visual features, particularly affected gazing behavior when looking at nature-content images. We discuss our results proposing a reconsideration of the definition of content-related top-down processes in accordance with the concept of embodied simulation in art perception.

[A non-classical approach to medical practices: Michel Foucault and Actor-Network Theory].

PubMed

Bińczyk, E

2001-01-01

The text presents an analysis of medical practices stemming from two sources: Michel Foucault's conception and the research of Annemarie Mol and John Law, representatives of a trend known as Actor-Network Theory. Both approaches reveal significant theoretical kinship: they can be successfully consigned to the framework of non-classical sociology of science. I initially refer to the cited conceptions as a version of non-classical sociology of medicine. The identity of non-classical sociology of medicine hinges on the fact that it undermines the possibility of objective definitions of disease, health and body. These are rather approached as variable social and historical phenomena, co-constituted by medical practices. To both Foucault and Mol the main object of interest was not medicine as such, but rather the network of medical practices. Mol and Law sketch a new theoretical perspective for the analysis of medical practices. They attempt to go beyond the dichotomous scheme of thinking about the human body as an object of medical research and the subject of private experience. Research on patients suffering blood-sugar deficiency provide the empirical background for the thesis of Actor-Network Theory representatives. Michel Foucault's conceptions are extremely critical of medical practices. The French researcher describes the processes of 'medicalising' Western society as the emergence of a new type of power. He attempts to sensitise the reader to the ethical dimension of the processes of medicalising society.

Study on integration potential of gas turbines and gas engines into parabolic trough power plants

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vogel, Tobias; Oeljeklaus, Gerd; Görner, Klaus

2017-06-01

Hybrid power plants represent an important intermediate step on the way to an energy supply structure based substantially on renewable energies. Natural gas is the preferred fossil fuel for hybridization of solar thermal power plants, due to its low specific CO2-emission and technical advantages by means of integration into the power plant process. The power plant SHAMS ONE serves as an exemplary object of this study. In order to facilitate peaker gas turbines in an economical way to a combined cycle approach, with the SGT-400 an industrial gas turbine of the 10-20 MWel class have been integrated into the base case power plant. The concept has been set up, to make use of the gas turbine waste heat for power generation and increasing the overall power plant efficiency of the hybrid power plant at the same time. This concept represents an alternative to the widely used concept of combined cycle power plants with solar heat integration. Supplementary, this paper also dedicates the alternative to use gas engines instead of gas turbines.

Nurses' policy influence: A concept analysis.

PubMed

Arabi, Akram; Rafii, Forough; Cheraghi, Mohammad Ali; Ghiyasvandian, Shahrzad

2014-05-01

Nurses' influence on health policy protects the quality of care by access to required recourses and opportunities. This is a new and important concept for nursing; however, research studies on policy influence of nurses in health care sector are lacking a basic conceptual understanding of what this concept represents. The aim of this paper is to clarify the concept of nurses' policy influence and to propose the definition of this concept, considering the context of Iran. The eight stages of Walker and Avant approach was used to guide this concept analysis. Various databases and internet engines were searched to find all related information about the concept. Textbooks were also searched manually. English language literature reports published between 1990 and 2012 were reviewed. Based on the analysis undertaken, nurses' policy influence is nurses' ability in influencing decisions and affairs related to health through political knowledge, effective communication, and collaboration with other members of the health team, which results in the improvement of nurses' job environment and increases patient outcomes. This is a dynamic process situated on a spectrum and is accompanied with nurses' knowledge, competency, power, and advocacy, and also their ability to change. Nurses have individual views on health care issues and influence health care policies in different ways. With a common understanding of nurses' policy influence as a concept, nurses will recognize the importance of policy making in the health sector and their influence on this process and also on patients' outcomes.

The NASA X-Ray Mission Concepts Study

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Petre, Robert; Ptak, A.; Bookbinder, J.; Garcia, M.; Smith, R.; Bautz, M.; Bregman, J.; Burrows, D.; Cash, W.; Jones-Forman, C.;

A new concept of precast concrete retaining wall: from laboratory model to the in-situ tests

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bui, T. T.; Tran, H. V.; Limam, A.; Bost, M.; Bui, Q. B.; Robit, P.

2018-04-01

A new concept for the soil nail walls is here proposed and validated through experimental and numerical approaches. This process, based on the use of precast elements that are easier to install, is cheaper and more aesthetic than the classical methods, but the main advantage is reducing the cement consumption which conducts to divided carbon footprint by three. In order to characterize the structural capacity of this new process, this article present an investigation on two in-situ representative walls, one in shotcrete which is the old way of construction, and the other, consisting the precast reinforced concrete slabs, which is the new process. We thus have a demonstrator on a real scale, and perfectly representative, since the constructive modes, as well as the mechanical, thermal, and hydric loadings are the real ones associated with the environment in situ. Substantial instrumentation has been realized over a long period (nearly 2 years), enabling to follow the evolution of the displacements of each wall and the efforts in the anchor nails. To determine the bearing capacity of the constituent element of the precast nail wall, an experimental study coupled with a numerical simulation has been conducted in the laboratory on a single precast slab. This study allows the evaluation of the load associated to crack initiation and the bearing capacity associated to the ultimate state, at the scale of the constituent elements. Finally, in order to evaluate the behaviour of the two concepts of nail walls in the case of extreme solicitation, a dynamic loading induced by an explosion has been conducted on the site.

Comparison of Analysis with Test for Static Loading of Two Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator Concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lyle, Karen H.

2015-01-01

Acceptance of new spacecraft structural architectures and concepts requires validated design methods to minimize the expense involved with technology demonstration via flight-testing. Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) architectures are attractive for spacecraft deceleration because they are lightweight, store compactly, and utilize the atmosphere to decelerate a spacecraft during entry. However, designers are hesitant to include these inflatable approaches for large payloads or spacecraft because of the lack of flight validation. This publication summarizes results comparing analytical results with test data for two concepts subjected to representative entry, static loading. The level of agreement and ability to predict the load distribution is considered sufficient to enable analytical predictions to be used in the design process.

[Patient safety: Glossary].

PubMed

Sabio Paz, Verónica; Panattieri, Néstor D; Cristina Godio, Farmacéutica; Ratto, María E; Arpí, Lucrecia; Dackiewicz, Nora

2015-10-01

Patient safety and quality of care has become a challenge for health systems. Health care is an increasingly complex and risky activity, as it represents a combination of human, technological and organizational processes. It is necessary, therefore, to take effective actions to reduce the adverse events and mitigate its impact. This glossary is a local adaptation of key terms and concepts from the international bibliographic sources. The aim is providing a common language for assessing patient safety processes and compare them.

A computational account of the development of the generalization of shape information.

PubMed

Doumas, Leonidas A A; Hummel, John E

2010-05-01

Abecassis, Sera, Yonas, and Schwade (2001) showed that young children represent shapes more metrically, and perhaps more holistically, than do older children and adults. How does a child transition from representing objects and events as undifferentiated wholes to representing them explicitly in terms of their attributes? According to RBC (Recognition-by-Components theory; Biederman, 1987), objects are represented as collections of categorical geometric parts ("geons") in particular categorical spatial relations. We propose that the transition from holistic to more categorical visual shape processing is a function of the development of geon-like representations via a process of progressive intersection discovery. We present an account of this transition in terms of DORA (Doumas, Hummel, & Sandhofer, 2008), a model of the discovery of relational concepts. We demonstrate that DORA can learn representations of single geons by comparing objects composed of multiple geons. In addition, as DORA is learning it follows the same performance trajectory as children, originally generalizing shape more metrically/holistically and eventually generalizing categorically. Copyright © 2010 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Human attribute concepts: relative ubiquity across twelve mutually isolated languages.

PubMed

Saucier, Gerard; Thalmayer, Amber Gayle; Bel-Bahar, Tarik S

2014-07-01

It has been unclear which human-attribute concepts are most universal across languages. To identify common-denominator concepts, we used dictionaries for 12 mutually isolated languages-Maasai, Supyire Senoufo, Khoekhoe, Afar, Mara Chin, Hmong, Wik-Mungkan, Enga, Fijian, Inuktitut, Hopi, and Kuna-representing diverse cultural characteristics and language families, from multiple continents. A composite list of every person-descriptive term in each lexicon was closely examined to determine the content (in terms of English translation) most ubiquitous across languages. Study 1 identified 28 single-word concepts used to describe persons in all 12 languages, as well as 41 additional terms found in 11 of 12. Results indicated that attribute concepts related to morality and competence appear to be as cross-culturally ubiquitous as basic-emotion concepts. Formulations of universal-attribute concepts from Osgood and Wierzbicka were well-supported. Study 2 compared lexically based personality models on the relative ubiquity of key associated terms, finding that 1- and 2-dimensional models draw on markedly more ubiquitous terms than do 5- or 6-factor models. We suggest that ubiquitous attributes reflect common cultural as well as common biological processes.

Semantic Similarity between Web Documents Using Ontology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chahal, Poonam; Singh Tomer, Manjeet; Kumar, Suresh

2018-06-01

The World Wide Web is the source of information available in the structure of interlinked web pages. However, the procedure of extracting significant information with the assistance of search engine is incredibly critical. This is for the reason that web information is written mainly by using natural language, and further available to individual human. Several efforts have been made in semantic similarity computation between documents using words, concepts and concepts relationship but still the outcome available are not as per the user requirements. This paper proposes a novel technique for computation of semantic similarity between documents that not only takes concepts available in documents but also relationships that are available between the concepts. In our approach documents are being processed by making ontology of the documents using base ontology and a dictionary containing concepts records. Each such record is made up of the probable words which represents a given concept. Finally, document ontology's are compared to find their semantic similarity by taking the relationships among concepts. Relevant concepts and relations between the concepts have been explored by capturing author and user intention. The proposed semantic analysis technique provides improved results as compared to the existing techniques.

Semantic Similarity between Web Documents Using Ontology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chahal, Poonam; Singh Tomer, Manjeet; Kumar, Suresh

2018-03-01

The World Wide Web is the source of information available in the structure of interlinked web pages. However, the procedure of extracting significant information with the assistance of search engine is incredibly critical. This is for the reason that web information is written mainly by using natural language, and further available to individual human. Several efforts have been made in semantic similarity computation between documents using words, concepts and concepts relationship but still the outcome available are not as per the user requirements. This paper proposes a novel technique for computation of semantic similarity between documents that not only takes concepts available in documents but also relationships that are available between the concepts. In our approach documents are being processed by making ontology of the documents using base ontology and a dictionary containing concepts records. Each such record is made up of the probable words which represents a given concept. Finally, document ontology's are compared to find their semantic similarity by taking the relationships among concepts. Relevant concepts and relations between the concepts have been explored by capturing author and user intention. The proposed semantic analysis technique provides improved results as compared to the existing techniques.

Integrated Technology Assessment Center (ITAC) Update

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Taylor, J. L.; Neely, M. A.; Curran, F. M.; Christensen, E. R.; Escher, D.; Lovell, N.; Morris, Charles (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

The Integrated Technology Assessment Center (ITAC) has developed a flexible systems analysis framework to identify long-term technology needs, quantify payoffs for technology investments, and assess the progress of ASTP-sponsored technology programs in the hypersonics area. For this, ITAC has assembled an experienced team representing a broad sector of the aerospace community and developed a systematic assessment process complete with supporting tools. Concepts for transportation systems are selected based on relevance to the ASTP and integrated concept models (ICM) of these concepts are developed. Key technologies of interest are identified and projections are made of their characteristics with respect to their impacts on key aspects of the specific concepts of interest. Both the models and technology projections are then fed into the ITAC's probabilistic systems analysis framework in ModelCenter. This framework permits rapid sensitivity analysis, single point design assessment, and a full probabilistic assessment of each concept with respect to both embedded and enhancing technologies. Probabilistic outputs are weighed against metrics of interest to ASTP using a multivariate decision making process to provide inputs for technology prioritization within the ASTP. ITAC program is currently finishing the assessment of a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO), rocket-based combined cycle (RBCC) concept and a TSTO turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) concept developed by the team with inputs from NASA. A baseline all rocket TSTO concept is also being developed for comparison. Boeing has recently submitted a performance model for their Flexible Aerospace System Solution for Tomorrow (FASST) concept and the ISAT program will provide inputs for a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) TBCC based concept in the near-term. Both of these latter concepts will be analyzed within the ITAC framework over the summer. This paper provides a status update of the ITAC program.

Involving patients in health technology funding decisions: stakeholder perspectives on processes used in Australia.

PubMed

Lopes, Edilene; Street, Jackie; Carter, Drew; Merlin, Tracy

2016-04-01

Governments use a variety of processes to incorporate public perspectives into policymaking, but few studies have evaluated these processes from participants' point of view. The objective of this study was twofold: to understand the perspectives of selected stakeholders with regard to involvement processes used by Australian Advisory Committees to engage the public and patients; and to identify barriers and facilitators to participation. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of different stakeholder groups involved in health technology funding decisions in Australia. Data were collected and analysed using a theoretical framework created by Rowe and Frewer, but adapted to more fully acknowledge issues of power and influence. Stakeholder groups disagreed as to what constitutes effective and inclusive patient involvement. Barriers reported by interviewees included poor communication, a lack of transparency, unworkable deadlines, and inadequate representativeness. Also described were problems associated with defining the task for patients and their advocates and with the timing of patient input in the decision-making process. Interviewees suggested that patient participation could be improved by increasing the number of patient organizations engaged in processes and including those organizations at different stages of decision making, especially earlier. The different evaluations made by stakeholder groups appear to be underpinned by contrasting conceptions of public involvement and its value, in line with Graham Martin's work which distinguishes between 'technocratic' and 'democratic' public involvement. Understanding stakeholders' perspectives and the contrasting conceptions of public involvement could foster future agreement on which processes should be used to involve the public in decision making. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

From local hydrological process analysis to regional hydrological model application in Benin: Concept, results and perspectives

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bormann, H.; Faß, T.; Giertz, S.; Junge, B.; Diekkrüger, B.; Reichert, B.; Skowronek, A.

This paper presents the concept, first results and perspectives of the hydrological sub-project of the IMPETUS-Benin project which is part of the GLOWA program funded by the German ministry of education and research. In addition to the research concept, first results on field hydrology, pedology, hydrogeology and hydrological modelling are presented, focusing on the understanding of the actual hydrological processes. For analysing the processes a 30 km 2 catchment acting as a super test site was chosen which is assumed to be representative for the entire catchment of about 15,000 km 2. First results of the field investigations show that infiltration, runoff generation and soil erosion strongly depend on land cover and land use which again influence the soil properties significantly. A conceptual hydrogeological model has been developed summarising the process knowledge on runoff generation and subsurface hydrological processes. This concept model shows a dominance of fast runoff components (surface runoff and interflow), a groundwater recharge along preferential flow paths, temporary interaction between surface and groundwater and separate groundwater systems on different scales (shallow, temporary groundwater on local scale and permanent, deep groundwater on regional scale). The findings of intensive measurement campaigns on soil hydrology, groundwater dynamics and soil erosion have been integrated into different, scale-dependent hydrological modelling concepts applied at different scales in the target region (upper Ouémé catchment in Benin, about 15,000 km 2). The models have been applied and successfully validated. They will be used for integrated scenario analyses in the forthcoming project phase to assess the impacts of global change on the regional water cycle and on typical problem complexes such as food security in West African countries.

Gray and Green Revisited: A Multidisciplinary Perspective of Gardens, Gardening, and the Aging Process

PubMed Central

Wright, Scott D.; Wadsworth, Amy Maida

2014-01-01

Over fourteen years ago, the concept of “gray and green” was first introduced by Wright and Lund (2000) to represent a new awareness and a call for increased scholarship at the intersection of environmental issues and the aging process. This review paper revisits that concept with a fresh perspective on the specific role of gardens and gardening in the aging experience. As example, gardening is one of the most popular home-based leisure activities in the US and represents an important activity in the lives of older adults in a variety of residential settings. Yet, there has been a lack of any comprehensive and multidisciplinary (science and humanities) examination of the nexus between gardening and the aging experience, and in particular with research connections to stewardship and caring. In this paper, we review contemporary articles demonstrating the multidisciplinarity of gardening and the aging process. First, we will focus on the beneficial psychological effects resulting from the cultivation of caring, including personal contentment and artistic expression. Second, we will focus on stewardship and how gardening increases health, community awareness, and a connection to future generations. On the surface, this may demonstrate a separation between the humanities and science, but we will clarify a symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines in our conclusion. PMID:24734179

From pattern to process: The strategy of the Earth Observing System: Volume 2: EOS Science Steering Committee report

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1987-01-01

The Earth Observing System (EOS) represents a new approach to the study of the Earth. It consists of remotely sensed and correlative in situ observations designed to address important, interrelated global-scale processes. There is an urgent need to study the Earth as a complete, integrated system in order to understand and predict changes caused by human activities and natural processes. The EOS approach is based on an information system concept and designed to provide a long-term study of the Earth using a variety of measurement methods from both operational and research satellite payloads and continuing ground-based Earth science studies. The EOS concept builds on the foundation of the earlier, single-discipline space missions designed for relatively short observation periods. Continued progress in our understanding of the Earth as a system will come from EOS observations spanning several decades using a variety of contemporaneous measurements.

Theoretical model to explain the problem-solving process in physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lopez, Carlos

2011-03-01

This work reports a theoretical model developed with the aim to explain the mental mechanisms of knowledge building during the problem-solving process in physics using a hybrid approach of assimilation- formation of concepts. The model has been termed conceptual chains and represents graphic diagrams of conceptual dependency, which have yielded information about the background knowledge required during the learning process, as well as about the formation of diverse structures that correspond to distinct forms of networking concepts Additionally, the conceptual constructs of the model have been classified according to five types of knowledge. Evidence was found about the influence of these structures, as well as of the distinct types of knowledge about the degree of difficulty of the problems. I want to be grateful to Laureate International Universities, Baltimore M.D., USA, for the financing granted for the accomplishment of this work.

How the conceptions of Chinese rhetorical expressions are derived from the corresponding generic sentences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Wenhui

2018-04-01

Generic sentences are simple and intuitive recognition and objective description to the external world in terms of "class". In the long evolutionary process of human being's language, the concepts represented by generic sentences has been internalized to be the defaulted knowledge in people's minds. In Chinese, some rhetorical expressions supported by corresponding generic sentences can be accepted by people. The derivation of these rhetorical expressions from the corresponding generic sentences is an important way for language to evolution, which reflects human's creative cognitive competence. From the perspective of conceptual blend theory and the theory of categorization of the cognitive linguistics, the goal of this paper is to analysis the process of the derivation of the rhetorical expressions from the corresponding generic sentences, which can facilitate the Chinese metaphorical information processing and the corpus construction of Chinese emotion metaphors.

Arrows in Biology: Lack of Clarity and Consistency Points to Confusion for Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, L. Kate; Cardenas, Jordan J.; Liang, Phyllis; Newman, Dina L.

2018-01-01

In this article, we begin to unpack the phenomenon of representational competence by exploring how arrow symbols are used in introductory biology textbook figures. Out of 1214 figures in an introductory biology textbook, 632 (52%) of them contained arrows that were used to represent many different concepts or processes. Analysis of these figures…

The Alchemy of Art: Transforming Student Art into Science Knowledge in the Chemistry Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flores, Mickie

2005-01-01

Art provides students a way to visually represent their scientific knowledge and at the same time helps teachers assess student understanding. Examining a drawing allows teachers to scrutinize students' mental model of a science concept. Science can be described as a continuing process of discovering the order and recurring patterns in nature;…

Left-Right Coding of Past and Future in Language: The Mental Timeline during Sentence Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ulrich, Rolf; Maienborn, Claudia

2010-01-01

The metaphoric mapping theory suggests that abstract concepts, like time, are represented in terms of concrete dimensions such as space. This theory receives support from several lines of research ranging from psychophysics to linguistics and cultural studies; especially strong support comes from recent response time studies. These studies have…

Decision modeling for fire incident analysis

Treesearch

Donald G. MacGregor; Armando González-Cabán

2009-01-01

This paper reports on methods for representing and modeling fire incidents based on concepts and models from the decision and risk sciences. A set of modeling techniques are used to characterize key fire management decision processes and provide a basis for incident analysis. The results of these methods can be used to provide insights into the structure of fire...

Logical Reasoning in Middle Childhood: A Study of Piagetian Concrete Operations Stage.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hooper, Frank H.; And Others

This 4-year longitudinal study of logical reasoning found complex interrelationships among different cognitive processes of children ages 6 to 15. Piaget's stage theory is discussed in the introduction, with a focus on the concrete operational stage in middle childhood. In the study, a representative array of logical concept tasks and short-term…

An Analysis of Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers' Performance in Modelling Tasks in Terms of Spatial Visualisation Ability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tasova, Halil Ibrahim; Delice, Ali

2012-01-01

Mathematical modelling involves mathematical constructions chosen to represent some real world situations and the relationships among them; it is the process of expressing a real world situation mathematically. Visualisation can play a significant role in the development of thinking or understanding mathematical concepts, and also makes abstract…

Exploring Student-Generated Animations, Combined with a Representational Pedagogy, as a Tool for Learning in Chemistry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yaseen, Zeynep; Aubusson, Peter

2018-02-01

This article describes an investigation into teaching and learning with student-generated animations combined with a representational pedagogy. In particular, it reports on interactive discussions that were stimulated by the students' own animations as well as their critiques of experts' animations. Animations representing views of states of matter provided a vehicle by which to investigate learning in a series of lessons. The study was implemented with Year 11 high school students. After students constructed, presented and discussed their animations, they watched and critiqued experts' animations. They were then interviewed about the teaching-learning process. Most students (91%) spoke positively about follow-up discussion classes, saying that their previous conceptions and understanding of states of matter had improved. They explained that they had identified some alternative conceptions, which they had held regarding states of matter and explained how their conceptions had changed. They reported that the teaching/learning process had helped them to develop a deeper understanding of the changing states of matter.

The 2002 Sydney Gay Games: re-presenting "lesbian" identities through sporting space.

PubMed

Lambert, Karen

2009-01-01

In this article poetic representation in qualitative research is explored in relation to researching "lesbian" lives. Set within the context of The 2002 Sydney Gay Games the article considers how poetry can bring to light experiences at the intersection of sexuality, sport, and place. The article details three aspects to this process. First, by asking what queer theory could do for particular research subjects, a robust, malleable, and transportable theoretical concept of "queer" is proposed that is responsive to the participants' lives and experiences. Second, this concept is applied methodologically in order to unsettle more traditional academic modes of representing interview data through the use of poetic forms of representation. Finally, a poem constructed from the Opening Ceremony of The Gay Games is presented and analyzed. Poetic representation is thus offered as a distinct methodology that permits a particular kind of "queer" analysis when researching "lesbian" lives.

An ontology-based exploration of the concepts and relationships in the activities and participation component of the international classification of functioning, disability and health.

PubMed

Della Mea, Vincenzo; Simoncello, Andrea

2012-02-28

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a classification of health and health-related issues, aimed at describing and measuring health and disability at both individual and population levels. Here we discuss a preliminary qualitative and quantitative analysis of the relationships used in the Activities and Participation component of ICF, and a preliminary mapping to SUMO (Suggested Upper Merged Ontology) concepts. The aim of the analysis is to identify potential logical problems within this component of ICF, and to understand whether activities and participation might be defined more formally than in the current version of ICF. In the relationship analysis, we used four predicates among those available in SUMO for processes (Patient, Instrument, Agent, and subProcess). While at the top level subsumption was used in most cases (90%), at the lower levels the percentage of other relationships rose to 41%. Chapters were heterogeneous in the relationships used and some of the leaves of the tree seemed to represent properties or parts of the parent concept rather than subclasses. Mapping of ICF to SUMO proved partially feasible, with the activity concepts being mapped mostly (but not totally) under the IntentionalProcess concept in SUMO. On the other hand, the participation concept has not been mapped to any upper level concept. Our analysis of the relationships within ICF revealed issues related to confusion between classes and their properties, incorrect classifications, and overemphasis on subsumption, confirming what already observed by other researchers. However, it also suggested some properties for Activities that could be included in a more formal model: number of agents involved, the instrument used to carry out the activity, the object of the activity, complexity of the task, and an enumeration of relevant subtasks.

Scrap tyre recycling process with molten zinc as direct heat transfer and solids separation fluid: A new reactor concept.

PubMed

Riedewald, Frank; Goode, Kieran; Sexton, Aidan; Sousa-Gallagher, Maria J

2016-01-01

Every year about 1.5 billion tyres are discarded worldwide representing a large amount of solid waste, but also a largely untapped source of raw materials. The objective of the method was to prove the concept of a novel scrap tyre recycling process which uses molten zinc as the direct heat transfer fluid and, simultaneously, uses this media to separate the solids products (i.e. steel and rCB) in a sink-float separation at an operating temperature of 450-470 °C. This methodology involved: •construction of the laboratory scale batch reactor,•separation of floating rCB from the zinc,•recovery of the steel from the bottom of the reactor following pyrolysis.

Representational geometry: integrating cognition, computation, and the brain

PubMed Central

Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus; Kievit, Rogier A.

2013-01-01

The cognitive concept of representation plays a key role in theories of brain information processing. However, linking neuronal activity to representational content and cognitive theory remains challenging. Recent studies have characterized the representational geometry of neural population codes by means of representational distance matrices, enabling researchers to compare representations across stages of processing and to test cognitive and computational theories. Representational geometry provides a useful intermediate level of description, capturing both the information represented in a neuronal population code and the format in which it is represented. We review recent insights gained with this approach in perception, memory, cognition, and action. Analyses of representational geometry can compare representations between models and the brain, and promise to explain brain computation as transformation of representational similarity structure. PMID:23876494

Simulation of human decision making

DOEpatents

Forsythe, J Chris [Sandia Park, NM; Speed, Ann E [Albuquerque, NM; Jordan, Sabina E [Albuquerque, NM; Xavier, Patrick G [Albuquerque, NM

2008-05-06

A method for computer emulation of human decision making defines a plurality of concepts related to a domain and a plurality of situations related to the domain, where each situation is a combination of at least two of the concepts. Each concept and situation is represented in the computer as an oscillator output, and each situation and concept oscillator output is distinguishable from all other oscillator outputs. Information is input to the computer representative of detected concepts, and the computer compares the detected concepts with the stored situations to determine if a situation has occurred.

Uncertainty assessment in geodetic network adjustment by combining GUM and Monte-Carlo-simulations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Niemeier, Wolfgang; Tengen, Dieter

2017-06-01

In this article first ideas are presented to extend the classical concept of geodetic network adjustment by introducing a new method for uncertainty assessment as two-step analysis. In the first step the raw data and possible influencing factors are analyzed using uncertainty modeling according to GUM (Guidelines to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurements). This approach is well established in metrology, but rarely adapted within Geodesy. The second step consists of Monte-Carlo-Simulations (MC-simulations) for the complete processing chain from raw input data and pre-processing to adjustment computations and quality assessment. To perform these simulations, possible realizations of raw data and the influencing factors are generated, using probability distributions for all variables and the established concept of pseudo-random number generators. Final result is a point cloud which represents the uncertainty of the estimated coordinates; a confidence region can be assigned to these point clouds, as well. This concept may replace the common concept of variance propagation and the quality assessment of adjustment parameters by using their covariance matrix. It allows a new way for uncertainty assessment in accordance with the GUM concept for uncertainty modelling and propagation. As practical example the local tie network in "Metsähovi Fundamental Station", Finland is used, where classical geodetic observations are combined with GNSS data.

The Personal Hearing System—A Software Hearing Aid for a Personal Communication System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grimm, Giso; Guilmin, Gwénaël; Poppen, Frank; Vlaming, Marcel S. M. G.; Hohmann, Volker

2009-12-01

A concept and architecture of a personal communication system (PCS) is introduced that integrates audio communication and hearing support for the elderly and hearing-impaired through a personal hearing system (PHS). The concept envisions a central processor connected to audio headsets via a wireless body area network (WBAN). To demonstrate the concept, a prototype PCS is presented that is implemented on a netbook computer with a dedicated audio interface in combination with a mobile phone. The prototype can be used for field-testing possible applications and to reveal possibilities and limitations of the concept of integrating hearing support in consumer audio communication devices. It is shown that the prototype PCS can integrate hearing aid functionality, telephony, public announcement systems, and home entertainment. An exemplary binaural speech enhancement scheme that represents a large class of possible PHS processing schemes is shown to be compatible with the general concept. However, an analysis of hardware and software architectures shows that the implementation of a PCS on future advanced cell phone-like devices is challenging. Because of limitations in processing power, recoding of prototype implementations into fixed point arithmetic will be required and WBAN performance is still a limiting factor in terms of data rate and delay.

Atmospheric rivers and past hydrometeorological extremes: Challenges and opportunities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sodemann, Harald

2017-04-01

Atmospheric rivers are a key term for describing water vapour transport in extratropical regions. The concept has become particularly valuable for linking meteorological process understanding with research focused on the impacts of heavy precipitation. Atmospheric rivers are narrow, elongated features of high integrated water vapour and water vapour flux can lead to severe precipitation and flooding if moisture is extracted efficiently. The orographic rises at the West Coast of the United States and Western Norway are regions where Atmospheric Rivers are one of the prime mechanisms for moisture delivery and precipitation extremes in the present climate. Due to the small horizontal scales of some of the processes climate models are challenged to represent this important transport process between mid-latitudes and the subtropics faithfully. Recent aircraft data and regional tracer model studies provide new insight into the formation and moisture transport mechanisms. In this study I review the concept and pertinent processes of Atmospheric Rivers, thereby focusing on caveats, challenges and opportunities for understanding past hydrometeorological extremes.

Towards a voxel-based geographic automata for the simulation of geospatial processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jjumba, Anthony; Dragićević, Suzana

2016-07-01

Many geographic processes evolve in a three dimensional space and time continuum. However, when they are represented with the aid of geographic information systems (GIS) or geosimulation models they are modelled in a framework of two-dimensional space with an added temporal component. The objective of this study is to propose the design and implementation of voxel-based automata as a methodological approach for representing spatial processes evolving in the four-dimensional (4D) space-time domain. Similar to geographic automata models which are developed to capture and forecast geospatial processes that change in a two-dimensional spatial framework using cells (raster geospatial data), voxel automata rely on the automata theory and use three-dimensional volumetric units (voxels). Transition rules have been developed to represent various spatial processes which range from the movement of an object in 3D to the diffusion of airborne particles and landslide simulation. In addition, the proposed 4D models demonstrate that complex processes can be readily reproduced from simple transition functions without complex methodological approaches. The voxel-based automata approach provides a unique basis to model geospatial processes in 4D for the purpose of improving representation, analysis and understanding their spatiotemporal dynamics. This study contributes to the advancement of the concepts and framework of 4D GIS.

Food entries in a large allergy data repository

PubMed Central

Plasek, Joseph M.; Goss, Foster R.; Lai, Kenneth H.; Lau, Jason J.; Seger,, Diane L.; Blumenthal, Kimberly G.; Wickner, Paige G.; Slight, Sarah P.; Chang, Frank Y.; Topaz, Maxim; Bates, David W.

2016-01-01

Objective Accurate food adverse sensitivity documentation in electronic health records (EHRs) is crucial to patient safety. This study examined, encoded, and grouped foods that caused any adverse sensitivity in a large allergy repository using natural language processing and standard terminologies. Methods Using the Medical Text Extraction, Reasoning, and Mapping System (MTERMS), we processed both structured and free-text entries stored in an enterprise-wide allergy repository (Partners’ Enterprise-wide Allergy Repository), normalized diverse food allergen terms into concepts, and encoded these concepts using the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) and Unique Ingredient Identifiers (UNII) terminologies. Concept coverage also was assessed for these two terminologies. We further categorized allergen concepts into groups and calculated the frequencies of these concepts by group. Finally, we conducted an external validation of MTERMS’s performance when identifying food allergen terms, using a randomized sample from a different institution. Results We identified 158 552 food allergen records (2140 unique terms) in the Partners repository, corresponding to 672 food allergen concepts. High-frequency groups included shellfish (19.3%), fruits or vegetables (18.4%), dairy (9.0%), peanuts (8.5%), tree nuts (8.5%), eggs (6.0%), grains (5.1%), and additives (4.7%). Ambiguous, generic concepts such as “nuts” and “seafood” accounted for 8.8% of the records. SNOMED-CT covered more concepts than UNII in terms of exact (81.7% vs 68.0%) and partial (14.3% vs 9.7%) matches. Discussion Adverse sensitivities to food are diverse, and existing standard terminologies have gaps in their coverage of the breadth of allergy concepts. Conclusion New strategies are needed to represent and standardize food adverse sensitivity concepts, to improve documentation in EHRs. PMID:26384406

Food entries in a large allergy data repository.

PubMed

Plasek, Joseph M; Goss, Foster R; Lai, Kenneth H; Lau, Jason J; Seger, Diane L; Blumenthal, Kimberly G; Wickner, Paige G; Slight, Sarah P; Chang, Frank Y; Topaz, Maxim; Bates, David W; Zhou, Li

2016-04-01

Accurate food adverse sensitivity documentation in electronic health records (EHRs) is crucial to patient safety. This study examined, encoded, and grouped foods that caused any adverse sensitivity in a large allergy repository using natural language processing and standard terminologies. Using the Medical Text Extraction, Reasoning, and Mapping System (MTERMS), we processed both structured and free-text entries stored in an enterprise-wide allergy repository (Partners' Enterprise-wide Allergy Repository), normalized diverse food allergen terms into concepts, and encoded these concepts using the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) and Unique Ingredient Identifiers (UNII) terminologies. Concept coverage also was assessed for these two terminologies. We further categorized allergen concepts into groups and calculated the frequencies of these concepts by group. Finally, we conducted an external validation of MTERMS's performance when identifying food allergen terms, using a randomized sample from a different institution. We identified 158 552 food allergen records (2140 unique terms) in the Partners repository, corresponding to 672 food allergen concepts. High-frequency groups included shellfish (19.3%), fruits or vegetables (18.4%), dairy (9.0%), peanuts (8.5%), tree nuts (8.5%), eggs (6.0%), grains (5.1%), and additives (4.7%). Ambiguous, generic concepts such as "nuts" and "seafood" accounted for 8.8% of the records. SNOMED-CT covered more concepts than UNII in terms of exact (81.7% vs 68.0%) and partial (14.3% vs 9.7%) matches. Adverse sensitivities to food are diverse, and existing standard terminologies have gaps in their coverage of the breadth of allergy concepts. New strategies are needed to represent and standardize food adverse sensitivity concepts, to improve documentation in EHRs. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Design, Development, and Initial Evaluation of a Terminology for Clinical Decision Support and Electronic Clinical Quality Measurement.

PubMed

Lin, Yanhua; Staes, Catherine J; Shields, David E; Kandula, Vijay; Welch, Brandon M; Kawamoto, Kensaku

2015-01-01

When coupled with a common information model, a common terminology for clinical decision support (CDS) and electronic clinical quality measurement (eCQM) could greatly facilitate the distributed development and sharing of CDS and eCQM knowledge resources. To enable such scalable knowledge authoring and sharing, we systematically developed an extensible and standards-based terminology for CDS and eCQM in the context of the HL7 Virtual Medical Record (vMR) information model. The development of this terminology entailed three steps: (1) systematic, physician-curated concept identification from sources such as the Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) and the SNOMED-CT CORE problem list; (2) concept de-duplication leveraging the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) MetaMap and Metathesaurus; and (3) systematic concept naming using standard terminologies and heuristic algorithms. This process generated 3,046 concepts spanning 68 domains. Evaluation against representative CDS and eCQM resources revealed approximately 50-70% concept coverage, indicating the need for continued expansion of the terminology.

Design, Development, and Initial Evaluation of a Terminology for Clinical Decision Support and Electronic Clinical Quality Measurement

PubMed Central

Lin, Yanhua; Staes, Catherine J; Shields, David E; Kandula, Vijay; Welch, Brandon M; Kawamoto, Kensaku

2015-01-01

When coupled with a common information model, a common terminology for clinical decision support (CDS) and electronic clinical quality measurement (eCQM) could greatly facilitate the distributed development and sharing of CDS and eCQM knowledge resources. To enable such scalable knowledge authoring and sharing, we systematically developed an extensible and standards-based terminology for CDS and eCQM in the context of the HL7 Virtual Medical Record (vMR) information model. The development of this terminology entailed three steps: (1) systematic, physician-curated concept identification from sources such as the Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) and the SNOMED-CT CORE problem list; (2) concept de-duplication leveraging the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) MetaMap and Metathesaurus; and (3) systematic concept naming using standard terminologies and heuristic algorithms. This process generated 3,046 concepts spanning 68 domains. Evaluation against representative CDS and eCQM resources revealed approximately 50–70% concept coverage, indicating the need for continued expansion of the terminology. PMID:26958220

Breakage mechanics—Part I: Theory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Einav, Itai

2007-06-01

Different measures have been suggested for quantifying the amount of fragmentation in randomly compacted crushable aggregates. A most effective and popular measure is to adopt variants of Hardin's [1985. Crushing of soil particles. J. Geotech. Eng. ASCE 111(10), 1177-1192] definition of relative breakage ' Br'. In this paper we further develop the concept of breakage to formulate a new continuum mechanics theory for crushable granular materials based on statistical and thermomechanical principles. Analogous to the damage internal variable ' D' which is used in continuum damage mechanics (CDM), here the breakage internal variable ' B' is adopted. This internal variable represents a particular form of the relative breakage ' Br' and measures the relative distance of the current grain size distribution from the initial and ultimate distributions. Similar to ' D', ' B' varies from zero to one and describes processes of micro-fractures and the growth of surface area. However, unlike damage that is most suitable to tensioned solid-like materials, the breakage is aimed towards compressed granular matter. While damage effectively represents the opening of micro-cavities and cracks, breakage represents comminution of particles. We term the new theory continuum breakage mechanics (CBM), reflecting the analogy with CDM. A focus is given to developing fundamental concepts and postulates, and identifying the physical meaning of the various variables. In this part of the paper we limit the study to describe an ideal dissipative process that includes breakage without plasticity. Plastic strains are essential, however, in representing aspects that relate to frictional dissipation, and this is covered in Part II of this paper together with model examples.

Exploring Radioactive Decay and Geochronology through Hydrostatic Principles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Claiborne, L. L.; Miller, C. F.

2008-12-01

One of the most essential tools to unraveling Earth's history and the processes involved in shaping our planet is an understanding of deep time and the timescales involved in geologic processes. The primary process that allows quantification of this history is radioactive decay of unstable isotopes within earth materials, and as one of the most essential tools in geology, this concept is taught at all levels of geoscience education. The concept of radioactive decay contains nuances that are often lost on students during lectures, and students often express low confidence in their comprehension of the concept. The goal of this laboratory activity is for students to understand radioactive decay including what controls it, how it proceeds and what information it provides, along with developing higher level scientific skills including making observations and predictions, and creating and interpreting quantitative graphical representations of data. The activity employs graduated beakers, shampoo, and stopwatches. Students pour shampoo put into an upper beaker (representing the parent isotope) with a hole in the base and allow it to flow into a lower beaker (representing the daughter isotope). Students measure changes in liquid depth with time, relating this to the amount of decay and its dependence on the amount of parent available (depth of liquid) and the decay constant (area of the hole in the beaker). Several beakers with varying sized holes illustrate variations specific to the different parent isotopes. They then explore graphical representations of their "decay" data, discovering for themselves which kinds of plots yield the equations and constants that control the decay process and the derived quantity of the "half-life", and are therefore the most useful. Making their own measurements, creating graphs, and then calculating these fundamental quantities is both enlightening and empowering. An advanced variation of this experiment involves students predicting the results and/or designing an experiment to address complex decay chains, where the daughter products are radioactive themselves. This permits them to investigate connections between 'activity' and equilibrium and to understand how disequilibrium can develop and be used for dating. In order to evaluate the success of the activity, each student participates in pre and post assessment including stating their confidence in their understanding of the concept.

Using a concept map as a tool for strategic planning: The Healthy Brain Initiative.

PubMed

Anderson, Lynda A; Day, Kristine L; Vandenberg, Anna E

2011-09-01

Concept mapping is a tool to assist in strategic planning that allows planners to work through a sequence of phases to produce a conceptual framework. Although several studies describe how concept mapping is applied to various public health problems, the flexibility of the methods used in each phase of the process is often overlooked. If practitioners were more aware of the flexibility, more public health endeavors could benefit from using concept mapping as a tool for strategic planning. The objective of this article is to describe how the 6 concept-mapping phases originally outlined by William Trochim guided our strategic planning process and how we adjusted the specific methods in the first 2 phases to meet the specialized needs and requirements to create The Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Health Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health. In the first stage (phases 1 and 2 of concept mapping), we formed a steering committee, convened 4 work groups over a period of 3 months, and generated an initial set of 42 action items grounded in science. In the second stage (phases 3 and 4), we engaged stakeholders in sorting and rating the action items and constructed a series of concept maps. In the third and final stage (phases 5 and 6), we examined and refined the action items and generated a final concept map consisting of 44 action items. We then selected the top 10 action items, and in 2007, we published The Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Health Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health, which represents the strategic plan for The Healthy Brain Initiative.

A Review of 25 Years of Research in Bidirectionality in Parent-Child Relationships: An Examination of Methodological Approaches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paschall, Katherine W.; Mastergeorge, Ann M.

2016-01-01

The concept of bidirectionality represents a process of mutual influence between parent and child, whereby each influences the other as well as the dyadic relationship. Despite the widespread acceptance of bidirectional models of influence, there is still a lack of integration of such models in current research designs. Research on…

Home-Based vs. Laboratory-Based Practical Activities in the Learning of Human Physiology: The Perception of Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neves, Ben-Hur S.; Altermann, Caroline; Gonçalves, Rithiele; Lara, Marcus Vinícius; Mello-Carpes, Pâmela B.

2017-01-01

Different tools have been used to facilitate the teaching and learning process in different areas of knowledge. Practical activities represent a form of teaching in which students not only listen to theoretical concepts but are also able to link theory and practice, and their importance in the biological sciences is notable. Sometimes, however,…

Intended and Unintended Meanings of Validity: Some Clarifying Comments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geisinger, Kurt F.

2016-01-01

The six primary papers in this issue of "Assessment in Education" emphasise a single primary point: the concept of validity is a complex one. Essentially, validity is a collective noun. That is, just as a group of players may be called a team and a group of geese a flock, so too does validity represent a variety of processes and…

The prefrontal cortex: categories, concepts and cognition.

PubMed Central

Miller, Earl K; Freedman, David J; Wallis, Jonathan D

2002-01-01

The ability to generalize behaviour-guiding principles and concepts from experience is key to intelligent, goal-directed behaviour. It allows us to deal efficiently with a complex world and to adapt readily to novel situations. We review evidence that the prefrontal cortex-the cortical area that reaches its greatest elaboration in primates-plays a central part in acquiring and representing this information. The prefrontal cortex receives highly processed information from all major forebrain systems, and neurophysiological studies suggest that it synthesizes this into representations of learned task contingencies, concepts and task rules. In short, the prefrontal cortex seems to underlie our internal representations of the 'rules of the game'. This may provide the necessary foundation for the complex behaviour of primates, in whom this structure is most elaborate. PMID:12217179

A tool for exploring the dynamics of innovative interventions for public health: the critical event card.

PubMed

Figueiro, Ana Claudia; de Araújo Oliveira, Sydia Rosana; Hartz, Zulmira; Couturier, Yves; Bernier, Jocelyne; do Socorro Machado Freire, Maria; Samico, Isabella; Medina, Maria Guadalupe; de Sa, Ronice Franco; Potvin, Louise

2017-03-01

Public health interventions are increasingly represented as complex systems. Research tools for capturing the dynamic of interventions processes, however, are practically non-existent. This paper describes the development and proof of concept process of an analytical tool, the critical event card (CEC), which supports the representation and analysis of complex interventions' evolution, based on critical events. Drawing on the actor-network theory (ANT), we developed and field-tested the tool using three innovative health interventions in northeastern Brazil. Interventions were aimed to promote health equity through intersectoral approaches; were engaged in participatory evaluation and linked to professional training programs. The CEC developing involve practitioners and researchers from projects. Proof of concept was based on document analysis, face-to-face interviews and focus groups. Analytical categories from CEC allow identifying and describing critical events as milestones in the evolution of complex interventions. Categories are (1) event description; (2) actants (human and non-human) involved; (3) interactions between actants; (4) mediations performed; (5) actions performed; (6) inscriptions produced; and (7) consequences for interventions. The CEC provides a tool to analyze and represent intersectoral internvetions' complex and dynamic evolution.

Rehabilitation: 25 Years of Concepts, Principles, Perspectives. A Collection of Articles Published in "Rehabilitation Literature," 1959-1984.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Regnier, Stephen J., Comp.; Petkovsek, Marian, Comp.

Twenty-five articles from the bimonthly journal "Rehabilitation Literature" (1959-1984) are presented. The articles were chosen to represent key concepts, principles, and perspectives in rehabilitation. The following authors and titles are represented: "A Concept of Rehabilitation" (H. Talbot); "Rehabilitation: Prospect and Retrospect" (H.…

Application of the Deming management method to equipment-inspection processes.

PubMed

Campbell, C A

1996-01-01

The Biomedical Engineering staff at the Washington Hospital Center has designed an inspection process that optimizes timely completion of scheduled equipment inspections. The method used to revise the process was primarily Deming, but certainly the method incorporates the re-engineering concept of questioning the basic assumptions around which the original process was designed. This effort involved a review of the existing process in its entirety by task groups made up of representatives from all involved departments. Complete success in all areas has remained elusive. However, the lower variability of inspection completion ratios follows Deming's description of a successfully revised process. Further CQI efforts targeted at specific areas with low completion ratios will decrease this variability even further.

Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students’ Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations

PubMed Central

Dasgupta, Annwesa P.; Anderson, Trevor R.; Pelaez, Nancy J.

2016-01-01

Researchers, instructors, and funding bodies in biology education are unanimous about the importance of developing students’ competence in experimental design. Despite this, only limited measures are available for assessing such competence development, especially in the areas of molecular and cellular biology. Also, existing assessments do not measure how well students use standard symbolism to visualize biological experiments. We propose an assessment-design process that 1) provides background knowledge and questions for developers of new “experimentation assessments,” 2) elicits practices of representing experiments with conventional symbol systems, 3) determines how well the assessment reveals expert knowledge, and 4) determines how well the instrument exposes student knowledge and difficulties. To illustrate this process, we developed the Neuron Assessment and coded responses from a scientist and four undergraduate students using the Rubric for Experimental Design and the Concept-Reasoning Mode of representation (CRM) model. Some students demonstrated sound knowledge of concepts and representations. Other students demonstrated difficulty with depicting treatment and control group data or variability in experimental outcomes. Our process, which incorporates an authentic research situation that discriminates levels of visualization and experimentation abilities, shows potential for informing assessment design in other disciplines. PMID:27146159

Are family-centred principles, functional goal setting and transition planning evident in therapy services for children with cerebral palsy?

PubMed

Darrah, J; Wiart, L; Magill-Evans, J; Ray, L; Andersen, J

2012-01-01

Family-centred service, functional goal setting and co-ordination of a child's move between programmes are important concepts of rehabilitation services for children with cerebral palsy identified in the literature. We examined whether these three concepts could be objectively identified in programmes providing services to children with cerebral palsy in Alberta, Canada. Programme managers (n= 37) and occupational and physical therapists (n= 54) representing 59 programmes participated in individual 1-h semi-structured interviews. Thirty-nine parents participated in eleven focus groups or two individual interviews. Evidence of family-centred values in mission statements and advisory boards was evaluated. Therapists were asked to identify three concepts of family-centred service and to complete the Measures of Process of Care for Service Providers. Therapists also identified therapy goals for children based on clinical case scenarios. The goals were coded using the components of the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health. Programme managers and therapists discussed the processes in their programmes for goal setting and for preparing children and their families for their transition to other programmes. Parents reflected on their experiences with their child's rehabilitation related to family-centredness, goal setting and co-ordination between programmes. All respondents expressed commitment to the three concepts, but objective indicators of family-centred processes were lacking in many programmes. In most programmes, the processes to implement the three concepts were informal rather than standardized. Both families and therapists reported limited access to general information regarding community supports. Lack of formal processes for delivery of family-centred service, goal-setting and co-ordination between children's programmes may result in inequitable opportunities for families to participate in their children's rehabilitation despite attending the same programme. Standardized programme processes and policies may provide a starting point to ensure that all families have equitable opportunities to participate in their child's rehabilitation programme. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Application of Alignment Methodologies to Spatial Ontologies in the Hydro Domain

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lieberman, J. E.; Cheatham, M.; Varanka, D.

2015-12-01

Ontologies are playing an increasing role in facilitating mediation and translation between datasets representing diverse schemas, vocabularies, or knowledge communities. This role is relatively straightforward when there is one ontology comprising all relevant common concepts that can be mapped to entities in each dataset. Frequently, one common ontology has not been agreed to. Either each dataset is represented by a distinct ontology, or there are multiple candidates for commonality. Either the one most appropriate (expressive, relevant, correct) ontology must be chosen, or else concepts and relationships matched across multiple ontologies through an alignment process so that they may be used in concert to carry out mediation or other semantic operations. A resulting alignment can be effective to the extent that entities in in the ontologies represent differing terminology for comparable conceptual knowledge. In cases such as spatial ontologies, though, ontological entities may also represent disparate conceptualizations of space according to the discernment methods and application domains on which they are based. One ontology's wetland concept may overlap in space with another ontology's recharge zone or wildlife range or water feature. In order to evaluate alignment with respect to spatial ontologies, alignment has been applied to a series of ontologies pertaining to surface water that are used variously in hydrography (characterization of water features), hydrology (study of water cycling), and water quality (nutrient and contaminant transport) application domains. There is frequently a need to mediate between datasets in each domain in order to develop broader understanding of surface water systems, so there is a practical as well theoretical value in the alignment. From a domain expertise standpoint, the ontologies under consideration clearly contain some concepts that are spatially as well as conceptually identical and then others with less clear similarities in either sense. Our study serves both to determine the limits of standard methods for aligning spatial ontologies and to suggest new methods of calculating similarity axioms that take into account semantic, spatial, and cognitive criteria relevant to fitness for relevant usage scenarios.

Translational science: past, present, and future.

PubMed

Curry, Stephen H

2008-02-01

The concept of translational science is at least 15 years old. However, in its most recent incarnation, it represents the identification of a funding category designed to encourage academic participation in a critical stage of the drug discovery and product development process. It is hoped that this will make the process both shorter and more efficient. In this review, the author first considers the historical development of the pharmaceutical R&D process. The place of translational science in the process, the scientific techniques involved, and aspects of the business environment necessary for its success are then considered. Translational science does not displace preclinical development. Both concepts are relevant to the paramount importance of successfully and expeditiously bridging the gap between preclinical science and clinical testing, "from bench to bedside." Translational science is particularly likely to stimulate biomarker research in the universities and related business community and will probably give a modest boost to early clinical testing and commercialization of discoveries within the academic setting. Whether there will be a consequent improvement in the quality and efficiency of the overall process remains to be seen.

Something Old, Something New: Army Leader Development in a Dynamic Environment

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-01-01

Army leadership concepts , as represented in doctrinal publications and Army traditions. These concepts reflect the service’s established formulation...years to represent fundamental qualities that officers and leaders should have, year in and year out, in any environment. As such, these concepts are...the Army’s concept . Finally, in the third section of this chapter we present our own viewpoint and synthesis, focusing on key skills and attributes that

Imaginal, semantic, and surface-level processing of concrete and abstract words: an electrophysiological investigation.

PubMed

West, W C; Holcomb, P J

2000-11-01

Words representing concrete concepts are processed more quickly and efficiently than words representing abstract concepts. Concreteness effects have also been observed in studies using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The aim of this study was to examine concrete and abstract words using both reaction time (RT) and ERP measurements to determine (1) at what point in the stream of cognitive processing concreteness effects emerge and (2) how different types of cognitive operations influence these concreteness effects. Three groups of subjects performed a sentence verification task in which the final word of each sentence was concrete or abstract. For each group the truthfulness judgment required either (1) image generation, (2) semantic decision, or (3) evaluation of surface characteristics. Concrete and abstract words produced similar RTs and ERPs in the surface task, suggesting that postlexical semantic processing is necessary to elicit concreteness effects. In both the semantic and imagery tasks, RTs were shorter for concrete than for abstract words. This difference was greatest in the imagery task. Also, in both of these tasks concrete words elicited more negative ERPs than abstract words between 300 and 550 msec (N400). This effect was widespread across the scalp and may reflect activation in a linguistic semantic system common to both concrete and abstract words. ERPs were also more negative for concrete than abstract words between 550 and 800 msec. This effect was more frontally distributed and was most evident in the imagery task. We propose that this later anterior effect represents a distinct ERP component (N700) that is sensitive to the use of mental imagery. The N700 may reflect the a access of specific characteristics of the imaged item or activation in a working memory system specific to mental imagery. These results also support the extended dual-coding hypothesis that superior associative connections and the use of mental imagery both contribute to processing advantages for concrete words over abstract words.

Aeronautics Autonomy Testbed Capability (AATC) Team Developed Concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Smith, Phillip J.

2018-01-01

In 2015, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) formed a multi-center, interdisciplinary team of engineers from three different aeronautics research centers who were tasked with improving NASA autonomy research capabilities. This group was subsequently named the Aeronautics Autonomy Testbed Capability (AATC) team. To aid in confronting the autonomy research directive, NASA contracted IDEO, a design firm, to provide consultants and guides to educate NASA engineers through the practice of design thinking, which is an unconventional method for aerospace design processes. The team then began learning about autonomy research challenges by conducting interviews with a diverse group of researchers and pilots, military personnel and civilians, experts and amateurs. Part of this design thinking process involved developing ideas for products or programs known as concepts that could enable real world fulfillment of the most important latent needs identified through analysis of the interviews. The concepts are intended to be sacrificial, intermediate steps in the design thinking process and are presented in this report to record the efforts of the AATC group. Descriptions are provided in present tense to allow for further ideation and imagining the concept as reality as was attempted during the teams discussions and interviews. This does not indicate that the concepts are actually in practice within NASA though there may be similar existing programs independent of AATC. These concepts were primarily created at two distinct stages during the design thinking process. After the initial interviews, there was a workshop for concept development and the resulting ideas are shown in this work as from the First Round. As part of succeeding interviews, the team members presented the First Round concepts to refine the understanding of existing research needs. This knowledge was then used to generate an additional set of concepts denoted as the Second Round. Some concepts were created by a single person in a few minutes while others were refined by the entire team over several weeks. Thus, certain ideas are more detailed than others but those from the second round are not necessarily more comprehensive than the first round concepts. Primarily, as reported here in the Second Round section, the designs serve to encompass more of the high level end user research needs which were not necessarily known to the team during the prior workshop. In the figures provided throughout this report, illustrations are often provided to represent a concept. Nearly all of the images are informal sketches or renderings and this casualness should, hopefully, not be held to negate the potential insights available within the concepts.

A study of kindergarten children's spatial representation in a mapping project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Davis, Genevieve A.; Hyun, Eunsook

2005-02-01

This phenomenological study examined kindergarten children's development of spatial representation in a year long mapping project. Findings and discussion relative to how children conceptualised and represented physical space are presented in light of theoretical notions advanced by Piaget, van Hiele, and cognitive science researchers Battista and Clements. Analyses of the processes the children used and their finished products indicate that children can negotiate meaning for complex systems of geometric concepts when given opportunities to debate, negotiate, reflect, evaluate and seek meaning for representing space. The complexity and "holistic" nature of spatial representation of young children emerged in this study.

Positive versus negative perfectionism in psychopathology: a comment on Slade and Owens's dual process model.

PubMed

Flett, Gordon L; Hewitt, Paul L

2006-07-01

This article reviews the concepts of positive and negative perfectionism and the dual process model of perfectionism outlined by Slade and Owens (1998). The authors acknowledge that the dual process model represents a conceptual advance in the study of perfectionism and that Slade and Owens should be commended for identifying testable hypotheses and future research directions. However, the authors take issue with the notion that there are two types of perfectionism, with one type of perfectionism representing a "normal" or "healthy" form of perfectionism. They suggest that positive perfectionism is motivated, at least in part, by an avoidance orientation and fear of failure, and recent attempts to define and conceptualize positive perfectionism may have blurred the distinction between perfectionism and conscientiousness. Research findings that question the adaptiveness of positive forms of perfectionism are highlighted, and key issues for future research are identified.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jabbari, M.; Hattel, J. H.; Jambhekar, V. A.

Evaporation of water from a ceramic layer is a key phenomenon in the drying process for the manufacturing of tape cast ceramics. This process contains mass, momentum and energy exchange between the porous medium and the free–flow region. In order to analyze such interaction processes, a Representative Elementary Volume (REV)–scale model concept is presented for coupling non–isothermal multi–phase compositional porous–media flow and single–phase compositional laminar free–flow. The preliminary results show the typical expected evaporation behaviour from a porous medium initially saturated with water, and its transport to the free–flow region according to the existent results from the literature.

Toward a definition of sarcopenia.

PubMed

Cederholm, Tommy E; Bauer, Juergen M; Boirie, Yves; Schneider, Stephane M; Sieber, Cornel C; Rolland, Yves

2011-08-01

The definition of sarcopenia has been thoroughly discussed by scientific stakeholders and industry representatives to increase the clinical applicability of the concept. The pooled consensus from 3 of 5 recent and parallel processes, of which 2 are pending, is that sarcopenia is mainly, but not only, an age-related condition defined by the combined presence of reduced muscle mass and muscle function. Contributing factors to sarcopenia are senescence, chronic disease, physical inactivity, and poor food intake. Cachexia may be considered as one etiologic pathway of an accelerated sarcopenia. The adjusted and extended definitions of sarcopenia promote the clinical use of the concept. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Heteromodal Cortical Areas Encode Sensory-Motor Features of Word Meaning.

PubMed

Fernandino, Leonardo; Humphries, Colin J; Conant, Lisa L; Seidenberg, Mark S; Binder, Jeffrey R

2016-09-21

The capacity to process information in conceptual form is a fundamental aspect of human cognition, yet little is known about how this type of information is encoded in the brain. Although the role of sensory and motor cortical areas has been a focus of recent debate, neuroimaging studies of concept representation consistently implicate a network of heteromodal areas that seem to support concept retrieval in general rather than knowledge related to any particular sensory-motor content. We used predictive machine learning on fMRI data to investigate the hypothesis that cortical areas in this "general semantic network" (GSN) encode multimodal information derived from basic sensory-motor processes, possibly functioning as convergence-divergence zones for distributed concept representation. An encoding model based on five conceptual attributes directly related to sensory-motor experience (sound, color, shape, manipulability, and visual motion) was used to predict brain activation patterns associated with individual lexical concepts in a semantic decision task. When the analysis was restricted to voxels in the GSN, the model was able to identify the activation patterns corresponding to individual concrete concepts significantly above chance. In contrast, a model based on five perceptual attributes of the word form performed at chance level. This pattern was reversed when the analysis was restricted to areas involved in the perceptual analysis of written word forms. These results indicate that heteromodal areas involved in semantic processing encode information about the relative importance of different sensory-motor attributes of concepts, possibly by storing particular combinations of sensory and motor features. The present study used a predictive encoding model of word semantics to decode conceptual information from neural activity in heteromodal cortical areas. The model is based on five sensory-motor attributes of word meaning (color, shape, sound, visual motion, and manipulability) and encodes the relative importance of each attribute to the meaning of a word. This is the first demonstration that heteromodal areas involved in semantic processing can discriminate between different concepts based on sensory-motor information alone. This finding indicates that the brain represents concepts as multimodal combinations of sensory and motor representations. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/369763-07$15.00/0.

FEA of the clinching process of short fiber reinforced thermoplastic with an aluminum sheet using LS-DYNA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Behrens, B.-A.; Bouguecha, A.; Vucetic, M.; Grbic, N.

2016-10-01

A structural concept in multi-material design is used in the automotive industry with the aim of achieving significant weight reductions of conventional car bodies. In this respect, the use of aluminum and short fiber reinforced plastics represents an interesting material combination. A wide acceptance of such a material combination requires a suitable joining technique. Among different joining techniques, clinching represents one of the most appealing alternative for automotive applications. This contribution deals with the FE simulation of the clinching process of two representative materials PA6GF30 and EN AW 5754 using the FE software LS-DYNA. With regard to the material modelling of the aluminum sheet, an isotropic material model based on the von Mises plasticity implemented in LS-DYNA was chosen. Analogous to aluminum, the same material model is used for modelling the short fiber reinforced thermoplastic. Additionally, a semi-analytical model for polymers (SAMP-1) also available in LS-DYNA was taken. Finally, the FEA of clinching process is carried out and the comparison of the simulation results is presented above.

MELLO: Medical lifelog ontology for data terms from self-tracking and lifelog devices.

PubMed

Kim, Hye Hyeon; Lee, Soo Youn; Baik, Su Youn; Kim, Ju Han

2015-12-01

The increasing use of health self-tracking devices is making the integration of heterogeneous data and shared decision-making more challenging. Computational analysis of lifelog data has been hampered by the lack of semantic and syntactic consistency among lifelog terms and related ontologies. Medical lifelog ontology (MELLO) was developed by identifying lifelog concepts and relationships between concepts, and it provides clear definitions by following ontology development methods. MELLO aims to support the classification and semantic mapping of lifelog data from diverse health self-tracking devices. MELLO was developed using the General Formal Ontology method with a manual iterative process comprising five steps: (1) defining the scope of lifelog data, (2) identifying lifelog concepts, (3) assigning relationships among MELLO concepts, (4) developing MELLO properties (e.g., synonyms, preferred terms, and definitions) for each MELLO concept, and (5) evaluating representative layers of the ontology content. An evaluation was performed by classifying 11 devices into 3 classes by subjects, and performing pairwise comparisons of lifelog terms among 5 devices in each class as measured using the Jaccard similarity index. MELLO represents a comprehensive knowledge base of 1998 lifelog concepts, with 4996 synonyms for 1211 (61%) concepts and 1395 definitions for 926 (46%) concepts. The MELLO Browser and MELLO Mapper provide convenient access and annotating non-standard proprietary terms with MELLO (http://mello.snubi.org/). MELLO covers 88.1% of lifelog terms from 11 health self-tracking devices and uses simple string matching to match semantically similar terms provided by various devices that are not yet integrated. The results from the comparisons of Jaccard similarities between simple string matching and MELLO matching revealed increases of 2.5, 2.2, and 5.7 folds for physical activity,body measure, and sleep classes, respectively. MELLO is the first ontology for representing health-related lifelog data with rich contents including definitions, synonyms, and semantic relationships. MELLO fills the semantic gap between heterogeneous lifelog terms that are generated by diverse health self-tracking devices. The unified representation of lifelog terms facilitated by MELLO can help describe an individual's lifestyle and environmental factors, which can be included with user-generated data for clinical research and thereby enhance data integration and sharing. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Conditioning from an information processing perspective.

PubMed

Gallistel, C R.

2003-04-28

The framework provided by Claude Shannon's [Bell Syst. Technol. J. 27 (1948) 623] theory of information leads to a quantitatively oriented reconceptualization of the processes that mediate conditioning. The focus shifts from processes set in motion by individual events to processes sensitive to the information carried by the flow of events. The conception of what properties of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli are important shifts from the tangible properties to the intangible properties of number, duration, frequency and contingency. In this view, a stimulus becomes a CS if its onset substantially reduces the subject's uncertainty about the time of occurrence of the next US. One way to represent the subject's knowledge of that time of occurrence is by the cumulative probability function, which has two limiting forms: (1) The state of maximal uncertainty (minimal knowledge) is represented by the inverse exponential function for the random rate condition, in which the US is equally likely at any moment. (2) The limit to the subject's attainable certainty is represented by the cumulative normal function, whose momentary expectation is the CS-US latency minus the time elapsed since CS onset. Its standard deviation is the Weber fraction times the CS-US latency.

Representational geometry: integrating cognition, computation, and the brain.

PubMed

Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus; Kievit, Rogier A

2013-08-01

The cognitive concept of representation plays a key role in theories of brain information processing. However, linking neuronal activity to representational content and cognitive theory remains challenging. Recent studies have characterized the representational geometry of neural population codes by means of representational distance matrices, enabling researchers to compare representations across stages of processing and to test cognitive and computational theories. Representational geometry provides a useful intermediate level of description, capturing both the information represented in a neuronal population code and the format in which it is represented. We review recent insights gained with this approach in perception, memory, cognition, and action. Analyses of representational geometry can compare representations between models and the brain, and promise to explain brain computation as transformation of representational similarity structure. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Large-scale experiments for the vulnerability analysis of buildings impacted and intruded by fluviatile torrential hazard processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sturm, Michael; Gems, Bernhard; Fuchs, Sven; Mazzorana, Bruno; Papathoma-Köhle, Maria; Aufleger, Markus

2016-04-01

In European mountain regions, losses due to torrential hazards are still considerable high despite the ongoing debate on an overall increasing or decreasing trend. Recent events in Austria severely revealed that due to technical and economic reasons, an overall protection of settlements in the alpine environment against torrential hazards is not feasible. On the side of the hazard process, events with unpredictable intensities may represent overload scenarios for existent protection structures in the torrent catchments. They bear a particular risk of significant losses in the living space. Although the importance of vulnerability is widely recognised, there is still a research gap concerning its assessment. Currently, potential losses at buildings due to torrential hazards and their comparison with reinstatement costs are determined by the use of empirical functions. Hence, relations of process intensities and the extent of losses, gathered by the analysis of historic hazard events and the information of object-specific restoration values, are used. This approach does not represent a physics-based and integral concept since relevant and often crucial processes, as the intrusion of the fluid-sediment-mixture into elements at risk, are not considered. Based on these findings, our work is targeted at extending these findings and models of present risk research in the context of an integral, more physics-based vulnerability analysis concept. Fluviatile torrential hazard processes and their impacts on the building envelope are experimentally modelled. Material intrusion processes are thereby explicitly considered. Dynamic impacts are gathered quantitatively and spatially distributed by the use of a large set of force transducers. The experimental tests are accomplished with artificial, vertical and skewed plates, including also openings for material intrusion. Further, the impacts on specific buildings within the test site of the work, the fan apex of the Schnannerbach torrent in Tyrol (Austria), are analysed in detail. A couple of buildings are entirely reconstructed within the physical scale model at the scale 1:30. They include basement and first floor and thereby all relevant openings on the building envelopes. The results from experimental modelling represent the data basis for further physics-based vulnerability analysis. Hence, the applied vulnerability analysis concept significantly extends the methods presently used in flood risk assessment. The results of the study are of basic importance for practical application, as they provide extensive information to support hazard zone mapping and management, as well as the planning of local technical protection measures.

Corral framework: Trustworthy and fully functional data intensive parallel astronomical pipelines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cabral, J. B.; Sánchez, B.; Beroiz, M.; Domínguez, M.; Lares, M.; Gurovich, S.; Granitto, P.

2017-07-01

Data processing pipelines represent an important slice of the astronomical software library that include chains of processes that transform raw data into valuable information via data reduction and analysis. In this work we present Corral, a Python framework for astronomical pipeline generation. Corral features a Model-View-Controller design pattern on top of an SQL Relational Database capable of handling: custom data models; processing stages; and communication alerts, and also provides automatic quality and structural metrics based on unit testing. The Model-View-Controller provides concept separation between the user logic and the data models, delivering at the same time multi-processing and distributed computing capabilities. Corral represents an improvement over commonly found data processing pipelines in astronomysince the design pattern eases the programmer from dealing with processing flow and parallelization issues, allowing them to focus on the specific algorithms needed for the successive data transformations and at the same time provides a broad measure of quality over the created pipeline. Corral and working examples of pipelines that use it are available to the community at https://github.com/toros-astro.

Visualizing Revision: Leveraging Student-Generated Between-Draft Diagramming Data in Support of Academic Writing Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olmanson, Justin; Kennett, Katrina; Magnifico, Alecia; McCarthey, Sarah; Searsmith, Duane; Cope, Bill; Kalantzis, Mary

2016-01-01

Once writers complete a first draft, they are often encouraged to evaluate their writing and prioritize what to revise. Yet, this process can be both daunting and difficult. This study looks at how students used a semantic concept mapping tool to re-present the content and organization of their initial draft of an informational text. We examine…

An Annotated Bibliography of Literature Integrating Organizational and Systems Theory

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-09-01

believed to be representative of current thinking on the problem as it is defined in this particular effort. 4. Abstracting For abstracting purposes...individual concept or isolated case which defies mathematical description or classical empirical validation) or nomothetic (pertaining to the abstract ...and to induce change in organizations - laboratory training. Laboratory training is a method used to promote changes in the learning process itself

Concepts for on-board satellite image registration. Volume 2: IAS prototype performance evaluation standard definition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Daluge, D. R.; Ruedger, W. H.

1981-06-01

Problems encountered in testing onboard signal processing hardware designed to achieve radiometric and geometric correction of satellite imaging data are considered. These include obtaining representative image and ancillary data for simulation and the transfer and storage of a large quantity of image data at very high speed. The high resolution, high speed preprocessing of LANDSAT-D imagery is considered.

Early Developmental Conditioning of Later Health and Disease: Physiology or Pathophysiology?

PubMed Central

Hanson, M. A.; Gluckman, P. D.

2014-01-01

Extensive experimental animal studies and epidemiological observations have shown that environmental influences during early development affect the risk of later pathophysiological processes associated with chronic, especially noncommunicable, disease (NCD). This field is recognized as the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD). We discuss the extent to which DOHaD represents the result of the physiological processes of developmental plasticity, which may have potential adverse consequences in terms of NCD risk later, or whether it is the manifestation of pathophysiological processes acting in early life but only becoming apparent as disease later. We argue that the evidence suggests the former, through the operation of conditioning processes induced across the normal range of developmental environments, and we summarize current knowledge of the physiological processes involved. The adaptive pathway to later risk accords with current concepts in evolutionary developmental biology, especially those concerning parental effects. Outside the normal range, effects on development can result in nonadaptive processes, and we review their underlying mechanisms and consequences. New concepts concerning the underlying epigenetic and other mechanisms involved in both disruptive and nondisruptive pathways to disease are reviewed, including the evidence for transgenerational passage of risk from both maternal and paternal lines. These concepts have wider implications for understanding the causes and possible prevention of NCDs such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, for broader social policy and for the increasing attention paid in public health to the lifecourse approach to NCD prevention. PMID:25287859

Ontology for heart rate turbulence domain from the conceptual model of SNOMED-CT.

PubMed

Soguero-Ruiz, Cristina; Lechuga-Suárez, Luis; Mora-Jiménez, Inmaculada; Ramos-López, Javier; Barquero-Pérez, Óscar; García-Alberola, Arcadi; Rojo-Álvarez, José L

2013-07-01

Electronic health record (EHR) automates the clinician workflow, allowing evidence-based decision support and quality management. We aimed to start a framework for domain standardization of cardiovascular risk stratification into the EHR, including risk indices whose calculation involves ECG signal processing. We propose the use of biomedical ontologies completely based on the conceptual model of SNOMED-CT, which allows us to implement our domain in the EHR. In this setting, the present study focused on the heart rate turbulence (HRT) domain, according to its concise guidelines and clear procedures for parameter calculations. We used 289 concepts from SNOMED-CT, and generated 19 local extensions (new concepts) for the HRT specific concepts not present in the current version of SNOMED-CT. New concepts included averaged and individual ventricular premature complex tachograms, initial sinus acceleration for turbulence onset, or sinusal oscillation for turbulence slope. Two representative use studies were implemented: first, a prototype was inserted in the hospital information system for supporting HRT recordings and their simple follow up by medical societies; second, an advanced support for a prospective scientific research, involving standard and emergent signal processing algorithms in the HRT indices, was generated and then tested in an example database of 27 Holter patients. Concepts of the proposed HRT ontology are publicly available through a terminology server, hence their use in any information system will be straightforward due to the interoperability provided by SNOMED-CT.

Principled and Statistical Connections in Common Sense Conception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prasada, Sandeep; Dillingham, Elaine M.

2006-01-01

Nominal concepts represent things as tokens of types. We report six experiments that investigate the nature of the relations we represent between the type of thing something is (e.g. DOG) and its other properties. The experiments provide evidence that we represent principled connections between the type of thing something is (e.g. DOG) and some of…

Air Force Research Laboratory space technology strategic investment model: analysis and outcomes for warfighter capabilities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Preiss, Bruce; Greene, Lloyd; Kriebel, Jamie; Wasson, Robert

2006-05-01

The Air Force Research Laboratory utilizes a value model as a primary input for space technology planning and budgeting. The Space Sector at AFRL headquarters manages space technology investment across all the geographically disparate technical directorates and ensures that integrated planning is achieved across the space community. The space investment portfolio must ultimately balance near, mid, and far-term investments across all the critical space mission areas. Investment levels and growth areas can always be identified by a typical capability analysis or gap analysis, but the value model approach goes one step deeper and helps identify the potential payoff of technology investments by linking the technology directly to an existing or potential concept. The value of the technology is then viewed from the enabling performance perspective of the concept that ultimately fulfills the Air Force mission. The process of linking space technologies to future concepts and technology roadmaps will be reviewed in this paper, along with representative results from this planning cycle. The initial assumptions in this process will be identified along with the strengths and weaknesses of this planning methodology.

Ontology patterns for complex topographic feature yypes

USGS Publications Warehouse

Varanka, Dalia E.

2011-01-01

Complex feature types are defined as integrated relations between basic features for a shared meaning or concept. The shared semantic concept is difficult to define in commonly used geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing technologies. The role of spatial relations between complex feature parts was recognized in early GIS literature, but had limited representation in the feature or coverage data models of GIS. Spatial relations are more explicitly specified in semantic technology. In this paper, semantics for topographic feature ontology design patterns (ODP) are developed as data models for the representation of complex features. In the context of topographic processes, component assemblages are supported by resource systems and are found on local landscapes. The topographic ontology is organized across six thematic modules that can account for basic feature types, resource systems, and landscape types. Types of complex feature attributes include location, generative processes and physical description. Node/edge networks model standard spatial relations and relations specific to topographic science to represent complex features. To demonstrate these concepts, data from The National Map of the U. S. Geological Survey was converted and assembled into ODP.

Validating the Airspace Concept Evaluation System for Different Weather Days

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zelinski, Shannon; Meyn, Larry

2006-01-01

This paper extends the process for validating the Airspace Concept Evaluation System using real-world historical flight operational data. System inputs such as flight plans and airport en-route capacities, are generated and processed to create a realistic reproduction of a single day's operations within the National Airspace System. System outputs such as airport throughput, delays, and en-route sector loads are then compared to real world operational metrics and delay statistics for the reproduced day. The process is repeated for 4 historical days with high and low traffic volume and delay attributed to weather. These 4 days are simulated using default en-route capacities and variable en-route capacities used to emulate weather. The validation results show that default enroute capacity simulations are closer to real-world data for low weather days than high weather days. The use of reduced variable enroute capacities adds a large delay bias to ACES but delay trends between weather days are better represented.

We are what we eat: How food is represented in our mind/brain.

PubMed

Rumiati, Raffaella I; Foroni, Francesco

2016-08-01

Despite the essential role of food in our lives, we have little understanding of the way our knowledge about food is organized in the brain. At birth, human infants exhibit very few food preferences, and do not yet know much about what is edible and what is not. A multisensory learning development will eventually turn young infants into omnivore adults, for whom deciding what to eat becomes an effortful task. Recognizing food constitutes an essential step in this decisional process. In this paper we examine how concepts about food are represented in the human brain. More specifically, we first analyze how brain-damaged patients recognize natural and manufactured food, and then examine these patterns in the light of the sensory-functional hypothesis and the domain-specific hypothesis. Secondly, we discuss how concepts of food are represented depending on whether we embrace the embodied view or the disembodied view. We conclude that research on food recognition and on the organization of knowledge about food must also take into account some aspects specific to food category, the relevance of which has not been sufficiently recognized and investigated to date.

Hydrological processes and the water budget of lakes

USGS Publications Warehouse

Winter, Thomas C.; Lerman, Abraham; Imboden, Dieter M.; Gat, Joel R.

1995-01-01

Lakes interact with all components of the hydrological system: atmospheric water, surface water, and groundwater. The fluxes of water to and from lakes with regard to each of these components represent the water budget of a lake. Mathematically, the concept of a water budget is deceptively simple: income equals outgo, plus or minus change in storage. In practice, however, measuring the water fluxes to and from lakes accurately is not simple, because understanding of the various hydrological processes and the ability to measure the various hydrological components are limited.

Design and analysis of advanced flight planning concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sorensen, John A.

1987-01-01

The objectives of this continuing effort are to develop and evaluate new algorithms and advanced concepts for flight management and flight planning. This includes the minimization of fuel or direct operating costs, the integration of the airborne flight management and ground-based flight planning processes, and the enhancement of future traffic management systems design. Flight management (FMS) concepts are for on-board profile computation and steering of transport aircraft in the vertical plane between a city pair and along a given horizontal path. Flight planning (FPS) concepts are for the pre-flight ground based computation of the three-dimensional reference trajectory that connects the city pair and specifies the horizontal path, fuel load, and weather profiles for initializing the FMS. As part of these objectives, a new computer program called EFPLAN has been developed and utilized to study advanced flight planning concepts. EFPLAN represents an experimental version of an FPS. It has been developed to generate reference flight plans compatible as input to an FMS and to provide various options for flight planning research. This report describes EFPLAN and the associated research conducted in its development.

Melancholia in medieval Persian literature: The view of Hidayat of Al-Akhawayni

PubMed Central

Dalfardi, Behnam; Yarmohammadi, Hassan; Ghanizadeh, Ahmad

2014-01-01

“Melancholia” seems to be the oldest term used to describe the manifestations of depression. Throughout the history of medicine, melancholia has been the focus of consideration of many scholars who have provided varying definitions of this disorder and its manifestations. This continual process has resulted in the gradual development of the concept of melancholia over time. Persian scholars were among the scientists who have studied the melancholia and contributed to its concept. One figure, Al-Akhawayni Bukhari (?-983 AD), a Persian physician whose reputation was based on the treatment of patients with mental problems, investigated this disorder. He described Melancholia and explained its clinical manifestations and treatment methods. Al-Akhawayni provided an early classification of the patients suffering from this disorder. Since the medieval Persian concept of melancholia is not well-known, this paper aims to review Al-Akhawayni’s 10th century knowledge on melancholia which can represent the early concept of this disorder in the Near East. PMID:25019055

Melancholia in medieval Persian literature: The view of Hidayat of Al-Akhawayni.

PubMed

Dalfardi, Behnam; Yarmohammadi, Hassan; Ghanizadeh, Ahmad

2014-06-22

"Melancholia" seems to be the oldest term used to describe the manifestations of depression. Throughout the history of medicine, melancholia has been the focus of consideration of many scholars who have provided varying definitions of this disorder and its manifestations. This continual process has resulted in the gradual development of the concept of melancholia over time. Persian scholars were among the scientists who have studied the melancholia and contributed to its concept. One figure, Al-Akhawayni Bukhari (?-983 AD), a Persian physician whose reputation was based on the treatment of patients with mental problems, investigated this disorder. He described Melancholia and explained its clinical manifestations and treatment methods. Al-Akhawayni provided an early classification of the patients suffering from this disorder. Since the medieval Persian concept of melancholia is not well-known, this paper aims to review Al-Akhawayni's 10(th) century knowledge on melancholia which can represent the early concept of this disorder in the Near East.

Ultra-processed food purchases in Norway: a quantitative study on a representative sample of food retailers.

PubMed

Solberg, Siri Løvsjø; Terragni, Laura; Granheim, Sabrina Ionata

2016-08-01

To identify the use of ultra-processed foods - vectors of salt, sugar and fats - in the Norwegian diet through an assessment of food sales. Sales data from a representative sample of food retailers in Norway, collected in September 2005 (n 150) and September 2013 (n 170), were analysed. Data consisted of barcode scans of individual food item purchases, reporting type of food, price, geographical region and retail concept. Foods were categorized as minimally processed, culinary ingredients, processed products and ultra-processed. Indicators were share of purchases and share of expenditure on food categories. Six geographical regions in Norway. The barcode data included 296 121 observations in 2005 and 501 938 observations in 2013. Ultra-processed products represented 58·8 % of purchases and 48·8 % of expenditure in 2013. Minimally processed foods accounted for 17·2 % of purchases and 33·0 % of expenditure. Every third purchase was a sweet ultra-processed product. Food sales changed marginally in favour of minimally processed foods and in disfavour of processed products between 2005 and 2013 (χ 2 (3)=203 195, P<0·001, Cramer's V=0·017, P<0·001). Ultra-processed products accounted for the majority of food sales in Norway, indicating a high consumption of such products. This could be contributing to rising rates of overweight, obesity and non-communicable diseases in the country, as findings from other countries indicate. Policy measures should aim at decreasing consumption of ultra-processed products and facilitating access (including economic) to minimally processed foods.

A novel methodology for estimating upper limits of major cost drivers for profitable conceptual launch system architectures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rhodes, Russel E.; Byrd, Raymond J.

1998-01-01

This paper presents a ``back of the envelope'' technique for fast, timely, on-the-spot, assessment of affordability (profitability) of commercial space transportation architectural concepts. The tool presented here is not intended to replace conventional, detailed costing methodology. The process described enables ``quick look'' estimations and assumptions to effectively determine whether an initial concept (with its attendant cost estimating line items) provides focus for major leapfrog improvement. The Cost Charts Users Guide provides a generic sample tutorial, building an approximate understanding of the basic launch system cost factors and their representative magnitudes. This process will enable the user to develop a net ``cost (and price) per payload-mass unit to orbit'' incorporating a variety of significant cost drivers, supplemental to basic vehicle cost estimates. If acquisition cost and recurring cost factors (as a function of cost per payload-mass unit to orbit) do not meet the predetermined system-profitability goal, the concept in question will be clearly seen as non-competitive. Multiple analytical approaches, and applications of a variety of interrelated assumptions, can be examined in a quick, (on-the-spot) cost approximation analysis as this tool has inherent flexibility. The technique will allow determination of concept conformance to system objectives.

Dual Character Concepts in Social Cognition: Commitments and the Normative Dimension of Conceptual Representation.

PubMed

Del Pinal, Guillermo; Reuter, Kevin

2017-04-01

The concepts expressed by social role terms such as artist and scientist are unique in that they seem to allow two independent criteria for categorization, one of which is inherently normative (Knobe, Prasada, & Newman, 2013). This study presents and tests an account of the content and structure of the normative dimension of these "dual character concepts." Experiment 1 suggests that the normative dimension of a social role concept represents the commitment to fulfill the idealized basic function associated with the role. Background information can affect which basic function is associated with each social role. However, Experiment 2 indicates that the normative dimension always represents the relevant commitment as an end in itself. We argue that social role concepts represent the commitments to basic functions because that information is crucial to predict the future social roles and role-dependent behavior of others. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Determinism and probability in the development of the cell theory.

PubMed

Duchesneau, François

2012-09-01

A return to Claude Bernard's original use of the concept of 'determinism' displays the fact that natural laws were presumed to rule over all natural processes. In a more restricted sense, the term boiled down to a mere presupposition of constant determinant causes for those processes, leaving aside any particular ontological principle, even stochastic. The history of the cell theory until around 1900 was dominated by a twofold conception of determinant causes. Along a reductionist trend, cells' structures and processes were supposed to be accounted for through their analysis into detailed partial mechanisms. But a more holistic approach tended to subsume those analytic means and the mechanism involved under a program of global functional determinations. When mitotic and meiotic sequences in nuclear replication were being unveiled and that neo-Mendelian genetics was being grafted onto cytology and embryology, a conception of strict determinism at the nuclear level, principally represented by Wilhelm Roux and August Weismann, would seem to rule unilaterally over the mosaic interpretation of the cleavage of blastomeres. But, as shown by E.B. Wilson, in developmental processes there occur contingent outcomes of cell division which observations and experiments reveal. This induces the need to admit 'epigenetic' determinants and relativize the presumed 'preformation' of thedevelopmental phases by making room for an emergent order which the accidental circumstances of gene replication would trigger on. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The use of typed lambda calculus for comprehension and construction of simulation models in the domain of ecology

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Uschold, Michael

1992-01-01

We are concerned with two important issues in simulation modelling: model comprehension and model construction. Model comprehension is limited because many important choices taken during the modelling process are not documented. This makes it difficult for models to be modified or used by others. A key factor hindering model construction is the vast modelling search space which must be navigated. This is exacerbated by the fact that many modellers are unfamiliar with the terms and concepts catered to by current tools. The root of both problems is the lack of facilities for representing or reasoning about domain concepts in current simulation technology. The basis for our achievements in both of these areas is the development of a language with two distinct levels; one for representing domain information, and the other for representing the simulation model. Of equal importance, is the fact that we make formal connections between these two levels. The domain we are concerned with is ecological modelling. This language, called Elklogic, is based on the typed lambda calculus. Important features include a rich type structure, the use of various higher order functions, and semantics. This enables complex expressions to be constructed from relatively few primitives. The meaning of each expression can be determined in terms of the domain, the simulation model, or the relationship between the two. We describe a novel representation for sets and substructure, and a variety of other general concepts that are especially useful in the ecological domain. We use the type structure in a novel way: for controlling the modelling search space, rather than a proof search space. We facilitate model comprehension by representing modelling decisions that are embodied in the simulation model. We represent the simulation model separately from, but in terms of a domain mode. The explicit links between the two models constitute the modelling decisions. The semantics of Elklogic enables English text to be generated to explain the simulation model in domain terms.

Concept of Complex Environmental Monitoring Network - Vardzia Rock Cut City Case Study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elashvili, Mikheil; Vacheishvili, Nikoloz; Margottini, Claudio; Basilaia, Giorgi; Chkhaidze, Davit; Kvavadze, Davit; Spizzichino, Daniele; Boscagli, Franceso; Kirkitadze, Giorgi; Adikashvili, Luka; Navrozashvili, Levan

2016-04-01

Vardzia represents an unique cultural heritage monument - rock cut city, which unites architectural monument and Natural-Geological complex. Such monuments are particularly vulnerable and their restoration and conservation requires complex approach. It is curved in various layers of volcanic tuffs and covers several hectares of area, with chronologically different segments of construction. This monument, as many similar monuments worldwide, is subjected to slow but permanent process of destruction, expressed in following factors: surface weathering of rock, active tectonics (aseismic displacement along the active faults and earthquakes), interaction between lithologically different rock layers, existence of major cracks and associated complex block structure, surface rainwater runoff and infiltrated ground water, temperature variations, etc. During its lifetime, Vardzia was heavily damaged by Historical Earthquake of 1283 and only partly restored afterwards. The technological progress together with the increased knowledge about ongoing environmental processes, established the common understanding that the complex monitoring of the environment represents the essential component for resolving such a principal issues, as: Proper management and prevention of natural disasters; Modeling of environmental processes, their short and long term prognosis; Monitoring of macro and micro climate; Safe functioning and preservation of important constructions. Research Center of Cultural Heritage and Environment of Ilia State University in cooperation with Experts from ISPRA, with the funding from the State agency of Cultural Heritage, has developed a concept of Vardzia complex monitoring network. Concept of the network includes: monitoring local meteorological conditions (meteorological station), monitoring microclimate in caves (temperature and humidity in the air and rock), monitoring microtremors and ambient seismic noise in Vardzia (local strong motion network), monitoring displacement and deformation of Vardzia cliff by means of Ground-based SAR (GBSAR) interferometry, continuous photo fixation of ongoing destruction. Works were started in 2014 from the development of network concept and at the end of year 2015 installation of all major components were accomplished. Special Wi-Fi network was installed, using 5.8 GHz frequency to online connect all the station to the central data center in Tbilisi and the same time avoiding complex network of wires on cultural monument. Acquired Data and network status can be seen online on Vardzia.IliaUni.edu.ge. For the management of considerable data flow special Internet Of Thing (IOT) server was developed. First streams of data are already collected and processing started, initial results already obtained and given in current presentation. It should be outlined that Vardzia complex monitoring network does not represent unitary technical or conceptual solution, but it is a constantly developing model to be farther extended by adding more monitoring points and/or increasing monitored parameters. It is extremely important to test and validate given approach in reality, enabling use of these technologies in the study and conservation projects of other, similar monuments.

Three faces of entropy for complex systems: Information, thermodynamics, and the maximum entropy principle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thurner, Stefan; Corominas-Murtra, Bernat; Hanel, Rudolf

2017-09-01

There are at least three distinct ways to conceptualize entropy: entropy as an extensive thermodynamic quantity of physical systems (Clausius, Boltzmann, Gibbs), entropy as a measure for information production of ergodic sources (Shannon), and entropy as a means for statistical inference on multinomial processes (Jaynes maximum entropy principle). Even though these notions represent fundamentally different concepts, the functional form of the entropy for thermodynamic systems in equilibrium, for ergodic sources in information theory, and for independent sampling processes in statistical systems, is degenerate, H (p ) =-∑ipilogpi . For many complex systems, which are typically history-dependent, nonergodic, and nonmultinomial, this is no longer the case. Here we show that for such processes, the three entropy concepts lead to different functional forms of entropy, which we will refer to as SEXT for extensive entropy, SIT for the source information rate in information theory, and SMEP for the entropy functional that appears in the so-called maximum entropy principle, which characterizes the most likely observable distribution functions of a system. We explicitly compute these three entropy functionals for three concrete examples: for Pólya urn processes, which are simple self-reinforcing processes, for sample-space-reducing (SSR) processes, which are simple history dependent processes that are associated with power-law statistics, and finally for multinomial mixture processes.

Nanoparticles for cultural heritage conservation: calcium and barium hydroxide nanoparticles for wall painting consolidation.

PubMed

Giorgi, Rodorico; Ambrosi, Moira; Toccafondi, Nicola; Baglioni, Piero

2010-08-16

Nanotechnology provides new concepts and materials for the consolidation and protection of wall paintings. In particular, humble calcium and barium hydroxide nanoparticles offer a versatile and highly efficient tool to combat the main degradation processes altering wall paintings. Clear example of the efficacy and potentiality of nanotechnology is represented by the conservation in situ of Maya wall paintings in the archaeological area in Calakmul (Mexico).

Concepts for on-board satellite image registration. Volume 2: IAS prototype performance evaluation standard definition. [NEEDS Information Adaptive System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Daluge, D. R.; Ruedger, W. H.

1981-01-01

Problems encountered in testing onboard signal processing hardware designed to achieve radiometric and geometric correction of satellite imaging data are considered. These include obtaining representative image and ancillary data for simulation and the transfer and storage of a large quantity of image data at very high speed. The high resolution, high speed preprocessing of LANDSAT-D imagery is considered.

Mining knowledge from corpora: an application to retrieval and indexing.

PubMed

Soualmia, Lina F; Dahamna, Badisse; Darmoni, Stéfan

2008-01-01

The present work aims at discovering new associations between medical concepts to be exploited as input in retrieval and indexing. Association rules method is applied to documents. The process is carried out on three major document categories referring to e-health information consumers: health professionals, students and lay people. Association rules evaluation is founded on statistical measures combined with domain knowledge. Association rules represent existing relations between medical concepts (60.62%) and new knowledge (54.21%). Based on observations, 463 expert rules are defined by medical librarians for retrieval and indexing. Association rules bear out existing relations, produce new knowledge and support users and indexers in document retrieval and indexing.

Generating Models of Surgical Procedures using UMLS Concepts and Multiple Sequence Alignment

PubMed Central

Meng, Frank; D’Avolio, Leonard W.; Chen, Andrew A.; Taira, Ricky K.; Kangarloo, Hooshang

2005-01-01

Surgical procedures can be viewed as a process composed of a sequence of steps performed on, by, or with the patient’s anatomy. This sequence is typically the pattern followed by surgeons when generating surgical report narratives for documenting surgical procedures. This paper describes a methodology for semi-automatically deriving a model of conducted surgeries, utilizing a sequence of derived Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) concepts for representing surgical procedures. A multiple sequence alignment was computed from a collection of such sequences and was used for generating the model. These models have the potential of being useful in a variety of informatics applications such as information retrieval and automatic document generation. PMID:16779094

[Restoration of the idea of contact. Psychopedagogic approach].

PubMed

Richaud, R L

1988-01-01

Our psychopedagogical work with teenagers having serious problems in the school setting led us to set up a clinical approach giving back to thought the ability to link affects and their representations whereas the thought process had seemed exhausted by a never-ending fight to avoid being swallowed up by the primary processes or through representing unbearable phantasms. In our hypothesis, as long as the imaginary can't be represented, it blocks access to any idea of contact. Having contact with works of art, which can serve as models of metamorphosis that has succeeded, seemed, to us, in the concept of a shared dream, as the best way to allows patients to reconnect lost or avoided parts, but from afar. The metaphor takes the place of the nameless crudity and horror of a very real alienating agent.

Space construction system analysis study: Project systems and missions descriptions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1979-01-01

Three project systems are defined and summarized. The systems are: (1) a Solar Power Satellite (SPS) Development Flight Test Vehicle configured for fabrication and compatible with solar electric propulsion orbit transfer; (2) an Advanced Communications Platform configured for space fabrication and compatible with low thrust chemical orbit transfer propulsion; and (3) the same Platform, configured to be space erectable but still compatible with low thrust chemical orbit transfer propulsion. These project systems are intended to serve as configuration models for use in detailed analyses of space construction techniques and processes. They represent feasible concepts for real projects; real in the sense that they are realistic contenders on the list of candidate missions currently projected for the national space program. Thus, they represent reasonable configurations upon which to base early studies of alternative space construction processes.

Conceptual Learning in Social Studies Classroom: An Analysis of Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) Social Studies Questions with and without Concept

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kilinc, Emin

2012-01-01

We are living in a conceptual world which we build through both informal and systematic interaction. Concepts enable us to simplify and organize our environment and communicate efficiently with others. The learning of concepts is represented by a general idea, usually expressed by a word, which represent a class or group of things or actions…

Towards an International Classification for Patient Safety: key concepts and terms

PubMed Central

Runciman, William; Hibbert, Peter; Thomson, Richard; Van Der Schaaf, Tjerk; Sherman, Heather; Lewalle, Pierre

2009-01-01

Background Understanding the patient safety literature has been compromised by the inconsistent use of language. Objectives To identify key concepts of relevance to the International Patient Safety Classification (ICPS) proposed by the World Alliance For Patient Safety of the World Health Organization (WHO), and agree on definitions and preferred terms. Methods Six principles were agreed upon—that the concepts and terms should: be applicable across the full spectrum of healthcare; be consistent with concepts from other WHO Classifications; have meanings as close as possible to those in colloquial use; convey the appropriate meanings with respect to patient safety; be brief and clear, without unnecessary or redundant qualifiers; be fit-for-purpose for the ICPS. Results Definitions and preferred terms were agreed for 48 concepts of relevance to the ICPS; these were described and the relationships between them and the ICPS were outlined. Conclusions The consistent use of key concepts, definitions and preferred terms should pave the way for better understanding, for comparisons between facilities and jurisdictions, and for trends to be tracked over time. Changes and improvements, translation into other languages and alignment with other sets of patient safety definitions will be necessary. This work represents the start of an ongoing process of progressively improving a common international understanding of terms and concepts relevant to patient safety. PMID:19147597

Adapting the concept of explanatory models of illness to the study of youth violence.

PubMed

Biering, Páll

2007-07-01

This study explores the feasibility of adapting Kleinman's concept of explanatory models of illness to the study of youth violence and is conducted within the hermeneutic tradition. Data were collected by interviewing 11 violent adolescents, their parents, and their caregivers. Four types of explanatory models representing the adolescent girls', the adolescent boys', the caregivers', and the parents' understanding of youth violence are found; they correspond sufficiently to Kleinman's concept and establish the feasibility of adapting it to the study of youth violence. The developmental nature of the parents' and adolescents' models makes it feasible to study them by means of hermeneutic methodology. There are some clinically significant discrepancies between the caregivers' and the clients' explanatory models; identifying such discrepancies is an essential step in the process of breaking down barriers to therapeutic communications. Violent adolescents should be encouraged to define their own explanatory models of violence through dialogue with their caregivers.

Using a small hybrid pulse power transformer unit as component of a high-current opening switch for a railgun

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Leung, E. M. W.; Bailey, R. E.; Michels, P. H.

1989-03-01

The hybrid pulse power transformer (HPPT) is a unique concept utilizing the ultrafast superconducting-to-normal transition process of a superconductor. When used in the form of a hybrid transformer current-zero switch (HTCS), this creates an approach in which the large, high-power, high-current opening switch in a conventional railgun system can be eliminated. This represents an innovative application of superconductivity to pulsed power conditioning required for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The authors explain the working principles of a 100-KJ unit capable of switching up to 500 kA at a frequency of 0.5 Hz and with a system efficiency of greater than 90 percent. Circuit analysis using a computer code called SPICE PLUS was used to verify the HTCS concept. This concept can be scaled up to applications in the several mega-ampere levels.

Finding myself: a theory on the maturation of spirituality and its influence on behavior during late adolescence.

PubMed

Mason, Deanna M

2014-01-01

This study employed a grounded theory research design to develop a theoretical model focused on the maturation of spirituality and its influence on behavior during late adolescence. Quantitative research studies have linked spirituality with decreased health-risk behaviors and increased health-promotion behaviors during late adolescence. Qualitative, theoretical data is proposed to discover the underlying reasons this relationship exists and increase the ability to apply this knowledge to practice. Twenty-one adolescents, age 16-21 years, were e-mail interviewed and transcripts analyzed using a conceptual lens of Blumer's symbolic interactionism. From this analysis, a theoretical model emerged with the core concept, finding myself that represents 5 core process concepts. Implications of this study illustrate that late adolescents are aware of their personal spiritual maturation as well as its influence on behavior. In addition, a distinction between the generic concept of spirituality, personal spirituality, and religion emerged.

Situation awareness acquired from monitoring process plants - the Process Overview concept and measure.

PubMed

Lau, Nathan; Jamieson, Greg A; Skraaning, Gyrd

2016-07-01

We introduce Process Overview, a situation awareness characterisation of the knowledge derived from monitoring process plants. Process Overview is based on observational studies of process control work in the literature. The characterisation is applied to develop a query-based measure called the Process Overview Measure. The goal of the measure is to improve coupling between situation and awareness according to process plant properties and operator cognitive work. A companion article presents the empirical evaluation of the Process Overview Measure in a realistic process control setting. The Process Overview Measure demonstrated sensitivity and validity by revealing significant effects of experimental manipulations that corroborated with other empirical results. The measure also demonstrated adequate inter-rater reliability and practicality for measuring SA based on data collected by process experts. Practitioner Summary: The Process Overview Measure is a query-based measure for assessing operator situation awareness from monitoring process plants in representative settings.

Uncertainty and equipoise: at interplay between epistemology, decision making and ethics.

PubMed

Djulbegovic, Benjamin

2011-10-01

In recent years, various authors have proposed that the concept of equipoise be abandoned because it conflates the practice of clinical care with clinical research. At the same time, the equipoise opponents acknowledge the necessity of clinical research if there are unresolved uncertainties about the effects of proposed healthcare interventions. As equipoise represents just 1 measure of uncertainty, proposals to abandon equipoise while maintaining a requirement for addressing uncertainties are contradictory and ultimately not valid. As acknowledgment and articulation of uncertainties represent key scientific and moral requirements for human experimentation, the concept of equipoise remains the most useful framework to link the theory of human experimentation with the theory of rational choice. In this article, I show how uncertainty (equipoise) is at the intersection between epistemology, decision making and ethics of clinical research. In particular, I show how our formulation of responses to uncertainties of hoped-for benefits and unknown harms of testing is a function of the way humans cognitively process information. This approach is based on the view that considerations of ethics and rationality cannot be separated. I analyze the response to uncertainties as it relates to the dual-processing theory, which postulates that rational approach to (clinical research) decision making depends both on analytical, deliberative processes embodied in scientific method (system II), and good human intuition (system I). Ultimately, our choices can only become wiser if we understand a close and intertwined relationship between irreducible uncertainty, inevitable errors and unavoidable injustice.

Uncertainty and Equipoise: At Interplay Between Epistemology, Decision-Making and Ethics

PubMed Central

Djulbegovic, Benjamin

2011-01-01

In recent years, various authors have proposed that the concept of equipoise be abandoned since it conflates the practice of clinical care with clinical research. At the same time, the equipoise opponents acknowledge the necessity of clinical research if there are unresolved uncertainties about the effects of proposed healthcare interventions. Since equipoise represents just one measure of uncertainty, proposals to abandon equipoise while maintaining a requirement for addressing uncertainties are contradictory and ultimately not valid. As acknowledgment and articulation of uncertainties represent key scientific and moral requirements for human experimentation, the concept of equipoise remains the most useful framework to link the theory of human experimentation with the theory of rational choice. In this paper, I show how uncertainty (equipoise) is at the intersection between epistemology, decision-making and ethics of clinical research. In particular, I show how our formulation of responses to uncertainties of hoped-for benefits and unknown harms of testing is a function of the way humans cognitively process information. This approach is based on the view that considerations of ethics and rationality cannot be separated. I analyze the response to uncertainties as it relates to the dual-processing theory, which postulates that rational approach to (clinical research) decision-making depends both on analytical, deliberative processes embodied in scientific method (system II) and “good” human intuition (system I). Ultimately, our choices can only become wiser if we understand a close and intertwined relationship between irreducible uncertainty, inevitable errors, and unavoidable injustice. PMID:21817885

Interoperability and different ways of knowing: How semantics can aid in cross-cultural understanding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pulsifer, P. L.; Parsons, M. A.; Duerr, R. E.; Fox, P. A.; Khalsa, S. S.; McCusker, J. P.; McGuinness, D. L.

2012-12-01

To address interoperability, we first need to understand how human perspectives and worldviews influence the way people conceive of and describe geophysical phenomena. There is never a single, unambiguous description of a phenomenon - the terminology used is based on the relationship people have with it and what their interests are. So how can these perspectives be reconciled in a way that is not only clear to different people but also formally described so that information systems can interoperate? In this paper we explore conceptions of Arctic sea ice as a means of exploring these issues. We examine multiple conceptions of sea ice and related processes as fundamental components of the Earth system. Arctic sea ice is undergoing rapid and dramatic decline. This will have huge impact on climate and biological systems as well as on shipping, exploration, human culture, and geopolitics. Local hunters, operational shipping forecasters, global climate researchers, and others have critical needs for sea ice data and information, but they conceive of, and describe sea ice phenomena in very different ways. Our hypothesis is that formally representing these diverse conceptions in a suite of formal ontologies can help facilitate sharing of information across communities and enhance overall Arctic data interoperability. We present initial work to model operational, research, and Indigenous (Iñupiat and Yup'ik) concepts of sea ice phenomena and data. Our results illustrate important and surprising differences in how these communities describe and represent sea ice, and we describe our approach to resolving incongruities and inconsistencies. We begin by exploring an intriguing information artifact, the World Meteorological Organization "egg code". The egg code is a compact, information rich way of illustrating detailed ice conditions that has been used broadly for a century. There is much agreement on construction and content encoding, but there are important regional differences in its application. Furthermore, it is an analog encoding scheme whose meaning has evolved over time. By semantically modeling the egg code, its subtle variations, and how it connects to other data, we illustrate a mechanism for translating across data formats and representations. But there are limits to what semantically modeling the egg-code can achieve. The egg-code and common operational sea ice formats do not address community needs, notably the timing and processes of sea ice freeze-up and break-up which have profound impact on local hunting, shipping, oil exploration, and safety. We work with local experts from four very different Indigenous communities and scientific creators of sea ice forecasts to establish an understanding of concepts and terminology related to fall freeze-up and spring break up from the individually represented regions. This helps expand our conceptions of sea ice while also aiding in understanding across cultures and communities, and in passing knowledge to younger generations. This is an early step to expanding concepts of interoperability to very different ways of knowing to make data truly relevant and locally useful.

Differing contributions of inferior prefrontal and anterior temporal cortex to concrete and abstract conceptual knowledge

PubMed Central

Hoffman, Paul; Binney, Richard J.; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2015-01-01

Semantic cognition is underpinned by regions involved in representing conceptual knowledge and executive control areas that provide regulation of this information according to current task requirements. Using distortion-corrected fMRI, we investigated the contributions of these two systems to abstract and concrete word comprehension. We contrasted semantic decisions made either with coherent contextual support, which encouraged retrieval of a rich conceptual representation, or with irrelevant contextual information, which instead maximised demands on control processes. Inferior prefrontal cortex was activated more when decisions were made in the presence of irrelevant context, suggesting that this region is crucial for the semantic control functions required to select appropriate aspects of meaning in the face of competing information. It also exhibited greater activation for abstract words, which reflects the fact that abstract words tend to have variable, context-dependent meanings that place higher demands on control processes. In contrast, anterior temporal regions (ATL) were most active when decisions were made with the benefit of a coherent context, suggesting a representational role. There was a graded shift in concreteness effects in this region, with dorsolateral areas particularly active for abstract words and ventromedial areas preferentially activated by concrete words. This supports the idea that concrete concepts are closely associated with visual experience and abstract concepts with auditory-verbal information; and that sub-regions of the ATL display graded specialisation for these two types of knowledge. Between these two extremes, we identified significant activations for both word types in ventrolateral ATL. This area is known to be involved in representing knowledge for concrete concepts; here we established that it is also activated by abstract concepts. These results converge with data from rTMS and neuropsychological investigations in demonstrating that representational content and task demands influence recruitment of different areas in the semantic network. PMID:25303272

Differing contributions of inferior prefrontal and anterior temporal cortex to concrete and abstract conceptual knowledge.

PubMed

Hoffman, Paul; Binney, Richard J; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A

2015-02-01

Semantic cognition is underpinned by regions involved in representing conceptual knowledge and executive control areas that provide regulation of this information according to current task requirements. Using distortion-corrected fMRI, we investigated the contributions of these two systems to abstract and concrete word comprehension. We contrasted semantic decisions made either with coherent contextual support, which encouraged retrieval of a rich conceptual representation, or with irrelevant contextual information, which instead maximised demands on control processes. Inferior prefrontal cortex was activated more when decisions were made in the presence of irrelevant context, suggesting that this region is crucial for the semantic control functions required to select appropriate aspects of meaning in the face of competing information. It also exhibited greater activation for abstract words, which reflects the fact that abstract words tend to have variable, context-dependent meanings that place higher demands on control processes. In contrast, anterior temporal regions (ATL) were most active when decisions were made with the benefit of a coherent context, suggesting a representational role. There was a graded shift in concreteness effects in this region, with dorsolateral areas particularly active for abstract words and ventromedial areas preferentially activated by concrete words. This supports the idea that concrete concepts are closely associated with visual experience and abstract concepts with auditory-verbal information; and that sub-regions of the ATL display graded specialisation for these two types of knowledge. Between these two extremes, we identified significant activations for both word types in ventrolateral ATL. This area is known to be involved in representing knowledge for concrete concepts; here we established that it is also activated by abstract concepts. These results converge with data from rTMS and neuropsychological investigations in demonstrating that representational content and task demands influence recruitment of different areas in the semantic network. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Effective Moment Feature Vectors for Protein Domain Structures

PubMed Central

Shi, Jian-Yu; Yiu, Siu-Ming; Zhang, Yan-Ning; Chin, Francis Yuk-Lun

2013-01-01

Imaging processing techniques have been shown to be useful in studying protein domain structures. The idea is to represent the pairwise distances of any two residues of the structure in a 2D distance matrix (DM). Features and/or submatrices are extracted from this DM to represent a domain. Existing approaches, however, may involve a large number of features (100–400) or complicated mathematical operations. Finding fewer but more effective features is always desirable. In this paper, based on some key observations on DMs, we are able to decompose a DM image into four basic binary images, each representing the structural characteristics of a fundamental secondary structure element (SSE) or a motif in the domain. Using the concept of moments in image processing, we further derive 45 structural features based on the four binary images. Together with 4 features extracted from the basic images, we represent the structure of a domain using 49 features. We show that our feature vectors can represent domain structures effectively in terms of the following. (1) We show a higher accuracy for domain classification. (2) We show a clear and consistent distribution of domains using our proposed structural vector space. (3) We are able to cluster the domains according to our moment features and demonstrate a relationship between structural variation and functional diversity. PMID:24391828

Exploring physics concepts among novice teachers through CMAP tools

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Suprapto, N.; Suliyanah; Prahani, B. K.; Jauhariyah, M. N. R.; Admoko, S.

2018-03-01

Concept maps are graphical tools for organising, elaborating and representing knowledge. Through Cmap tools software, it can be explored the understanding and the hierarchical structuring of physics concepts among novice teachers. The software helps physics teachers indicated a physics context, focus questions, parking lots, cross-links, branching, hierarchy, and propositions. By using an exploratory quantitative study, a total 13-concept maps with different physics topics created by novice physics teachers were analysed. The main differences of scoring between lecturer and peer-teachers’ scoring were also illustrated. The study offered some implications, especially for physics educators to determine the hierarchical structure of the physics concepts, to construct a physics focus question, and to see how a concept in one domain of knowledge represented on the map is related to a concept in another domain shown on the map.

Fuzzy-based propagation of prior knowledge to improve large-scale image analysis pipelines

PubMed Central

Mikut, Ralf

2017-01-01

Many automatically analyzable scientific questions are well-posed and a variety of information about expected outcomes is available a priori. Although often neglected, this prior knowledge can be systematically exploited to make automated analysis operations sensitive to a desired phenomenon or to evaluate extracted content with respect to this prior knowledge. For instance, the performance of processing operators can be greatly enhanced by a more focused detection strategy and by direct information about the ambiguity inherent in the extracted data. We present a new concept that increases the result quality awareness of image analysis operators by estimating and distributing the degree of uncertainty involved in their output based on prior knowledge. This allows the use of simple processing operators that are suitable for analyzing large-scale spatiotemporal (3D+t) microscopy images without compromising result quality. On the foundation of fuzzy set theory, we transform available prior knowledge into a mathematical representation and extensively use it to enhance the result quality of various processing operators. These concepts are illustrated on a typical bioimage analysis pipeline comprised of seed point detection, segmentation, multiview fusion and tracking. The functionality of the proposed approach is further validated on a comprehensive simulated 3D+t benchmark data set that mimics embryonic development and on large-scale light-sheet microscopy data of a zebrafish embryo. The general concept introduced in this contribution represents a new approach to efficiently exploit prior knowledge to improve the result quality of image analysis pipelines. The generality of the concept makes it applicable to practically any field with processing strategies that are arranged as linear pipelines. The automated analysis of terabyte-scale microscopy data will especially benefit from sophisticated and efficient algorithms that enable a quantitative and fast readout. PMID:29095927

Tribology experiment. [journal bearings and liquid lubricants

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wall, W. A.

1981-01-01

A two-dimensional concept for Spacelab rack 7 was developed to study the interaction of liquid lubricants and surfaces under static and dynamic conditions in a low-gravity environment fluid wetting and spreading experiments of a journal bearing experiments, and means to accurately measure and record the low-gravity environment during experimentation are planned. The wetting and spreading process of selected commercial lubricants on representative surface are to the observes in a near-zero gravity environment.

Situation Awareness-Based Agent Transparency

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-04-01

metacognition , the concept of which represents a person’s understanding of what thought processes are going on within oneself (Flavell, 1976). In this...context, metacognition refers to where the ASM provides input as to what types of information it is missing in order for the ASM to perform at its...action or activity that an end user must take. Dowse et al. (2010) found that visuals that were simple, had a clear focus, and reflected familiar life

The Tail of BPM

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kruba, Steve; Meyer, Jim

Business process management suites (BPMS's) represent one of the fastest growing segments in the software industry as organizations automate their key business processes. As this market matures, it is interesting to compare it to Chris Anderson's 'Long Tail.' Although the 2004 "Long Tail" article in Wired magazine was primarily about the media and entertainment industries, it has since been applied (and perhaps misapplied) to other markets. Analysts describe a "Tail of BPM" market that is, perhaps, several times larger than the traditional BPMS product market. This paper will draw comparisons between the concepts in Anderson's article (and subsequent book) and the BPM solutions market.

On some approaches to model reversible magnetization processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chwastek, K.; Baghel, A. P. S.; Sai Ram, B.; Borowik, B.; Daniel, L.; Kulkarni, S. V.

2018-04-01

This paper focuses on the problem of how reversible magnetization processes are taken into account in contemporary descriptions of hysteresis curves. For comparison, three versions of the phenomenological T(x) model based on hyperbolic tangent mapping are considered. Two of them are based on summing the output of the hysteresis operator with a linear or nonlinear mapping. The third description is inspired by the concept of the product Preisach model. Total susceptibility is modulated with a magnetization-dependent function. The models are verified using measurement data for grain-oriented electrical steel. The proposed third description represents minor loops most accurately.

Cyclical processes in personality and psychopathology.

PubMed

Wachtel, P L

1994-02-01

Both the understanding of psychopathology and the ability to intervene therapeutically are enhanced by an appreciation of the central role of vicious circles in the development and maintenance of psychological disorder. It is usually possible to discern a structure to people's difficulties in which internal states and external events continually re-create the conditions for the re-occurrence of each other in all too real psychological version of the mythical perpetual motion machine. The present article illustrates how such circular processes work in a number of representative types of psychological difficulty and discusses the implications of this conception for understanding psychopathology and for therapeutic intervention.

Gene Ontology synonym generation rules lead to increased performance in biomedical concept recognition.

PubMed

Funk, Christopher S; Cohen, K Bretonnel; Hunter, Lawrence E; Verspoor, Karin M

2016-09-09

Gene Ontology (GO) terms represent the standard for annotation and representation of molecular functions, biological processes and cellular compartments, but a large gap exists between the way concepts are represented in the ontology and how they are expressed in natural language text. The construction of highly specific GO terms is formulaic, consisting of parts and pieces from more simple terms. We present two different types of manually generated rules to help capture the variation of how GO terms can appear in natural language text. The first set of rules takes into account the compositional nature of GO and recursively decomposes the terms into their smallest constituent parts. The second set of rules generates derivational variations of these smaller terms and compositionally combines all generated variants to form the original term. By applying both types of rules, new synonyms are generated for two-thirds of all GO terms and an increase in F-measure performance for recognition of GO on the CRAFT corpus from 0.498 to 0.636 is observed. Additionally, we evaluated the combination of both types of rules over one million full text documents from Elsevier; manual validation and error analysis show we are able to recognize GO concepts with reasonable accuracy (88 %) based on random sampling of annotations. In this work we present a set of simple synonym generation rules that utilize the highly compositional and formulaic nature of the Gene Ontology concepts. We illustrate how the generated synonyms aid in improving recognition of GO concepts on two different biomedical corpora. We discuss other applications of our rules for GO ontology quality assurance, explore the issue of overgeneration, and provide examples of how similar methodologies could be applied to other biomedical terminologies. Additionally, we provide all generated synonyms for use by the text-mining community.

Validating Domain Ontologies: A Methodology Exemplified for Concept Maps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steiner, Christina M.; Albert, Dietrich

2017-01-01

Ontologies play an important role as knowledge domain representations in technology-enhanced learning and instruction. Represented in form of concept maps they are commonly used as teaching and learning material and have the potential to enhance positive educational outcomes. To ensure the effective use of an ontology representing a knowledge…

Concept Mapping: A Critical Thinking Technique

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harris, Charles M.; Zha, Shenghua

2013-01-01

Concept mapping, graphically depicting the structure of abstract concepts, is based on the observation that pictures and line drawings are often more easily comprehended than the words that represent an abstract concept. The efficacy of concept mapping for facilitating critical thinking was assessed in four sections of an introductory psychology…

Linked Forests: Semantic similarity of geographical concepts "forest"

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Čerba, Otakar; Jedlička, Karel

2016-01-01

Linked Data represents the new trend in geoinformatics and geomatics. It produces a structure of objects (in a form of concepts or terms) interconnected by object relations expressing a type of semantic relationships of various concepts. The research published in this article studies, if objects connected by above mentioned relations are more similar than objects representing the same phenomenon, but standing alone. The phenomenon "forest" and relevant geographical concepts were chosen as the domain of the research. The concepts similarity (Tanimoto coefficient as a specification of Tversky index) was computed on the basis of explicit information provided by thesauri containing particular concepts. Overall in the seven thesauri (AGROVOC, EuroVoc, GEMET, LusTRE/EARTh, NAL, OECD and STW) there was tested if the "forest" concept interconnected by the relation skos:exactMatch are more similar than other, not interlinked concepts. The results of the research are important for the sharing and combining of geographical data, information and knowledge. The proposed methodology can be reused to a comparison of other geographical concepts.

Neural correlates of the self-concept in adolescence-A focus on the significance of friends.

PubMed

Romund, Lydia; Golde, Sabrina; Lorenz, Robert C; Raufelder, Diana; Pelz, Patricia; Gleich, Tobias; Heinz, Andreas; Beck, Anne

2017-02-01

The formation of a coherent and unified self-concept represents a key developmental stage during adolescence. Imaging studies on self-referential processing in adolescents are rare, and it is not clear whether neural structures involved in self-reflection are also involved in reflections of familiar others. In the current study, 41 adolescents were asked to make judgments about trait adjectives during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): they had to indicate whether the word describes themselves, their friends, their teachers or politicians. Findings indicate a greater overlap in neural networks for responses to self- and friend-related judgments compared to teachers and politicians. In particular, classic self-reference structures such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and medial posterior parietal cortex also exhibited higher activation to judgments about friends. In contrast, brain responses towards judgments of teachers (familiar others) compared to politicians (unfamiliar others) did not significantly differ. Results support behavioral findings of a greater relevance of friends for the development of a self-concept during adolescence and indicate underlying functional brain processes. Hum Brain Mapp 38:987-996, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Building an ontology of pulmonary diseases with natural language processing tools using textual corpora.

PubMed

Baneyx, Audrey; Charlet, Jean; Jaulent, Marie-Christine

2007-01-01

Pathologies and acts are classified in thesauri to help physicians to code their activity. In practice, the use of thesauri is not sufficient to reduce variability in coding and thesauri are not suitable for computer processing. We think the automation of the coding task requires a conceptual modeling of medical items: an ontology. Our task is to help lung specialists code acts and diagnoses with software that represents medical knowledge of this concerned specialty by an ontology. The objective of the reported work was to build an ontology of pulmonary diseases dedicated to the coding process. To carry out this objective, we develop a precise methodological process for the knowledge engineer in order to build various types of medical ontologies. This process is based on the need to express precisely in natural language the meaning of each concept using differential semantics principles. A differential ontology is a hierarchy of concepts and relationships organized according to their similarities and differences. Our main research hypothesis is to apply natural language processing tools to corpora to develop the resources needed to build the ontology. We consider two corpora, one composed of patient discharge summaries and the other being a teaching book. We propose to combine two approaches to enrich the ontology building: (i) a method which consists of building terminological resources through distributional analysis and (ii) a method based on the observation of corpus sequences in order to reveal semantic relationships. Our ontology currently includes 1550 concepts and the software implementing the coding process is still under development. Results show that the proposed approach is operational and indicates that the combination of these methods and the comparison of the resulting terminological structures give interesting clues to a knowledge engineer for the building of an ontology.

[Creation and management of organizational knowledge].

PubMed

Shinyashiki, Gilberto Tadeu; Trevizan, Maria Auxiliadora; Mendes, Isabel Amélia

2003-01-01

With a view to creating and establishing a sustainable position of competitive advantage, the best organizations are increasingly investing in the application of concepts such as learning, knowledge and competency. The organization's creation or acquisition of knowledge about its actions represents an intangible resource that is capable of conferring a competitive advantage upon them. This knowledge derives from interactions developed in learning processes that occur in the organizational environment. The more specific characteristics this knowledge demonstrates in relation to the organization, the more it will become the foundation of its core competencies and, consequently, an important strategic asset. This article emphasizes nurses' role in the process of knowledge management, placing them in the intersection between horizontal and vertical information levels as well as in the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage. Authors believe that this contribution may represent an opportunity for a reflection about its implications for the scenarious of health and nursing practices.

Mining Concept Maps to Understand University Students' Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yoo, Jin Soung; Cho, Moon-Heum

2012-01-01

Concept maps, visual representations of knowledge, are used in an educational context as a way to represent students' knowledge, and identify mental models of students; however there is a limitation of using concept mapping due to its difficulty to evaluate the concept maps. A concept map has a complex structure which is composed of concepts and…

Shame, Guilt and Remorse: Implications for Offender Populations

PubMed Central

Tangney, June Price; Stuewig, Jeff; Hafez, Logaina

2011-01-01

The emotions shame and guilt may represent a critical stepping stone in the rehabilitation process. Often referred to as “moral” emotions owing to their presumed role in promoting altruistic behavior and inhibiting antisocial behaviors, shame and guilt provide potentially exciting points of intervention with offenders. In this article, we describe current psychological theory and research that underscores important differences between shame and guilt. We note parallels between psychologists’ conceptions of guilt and shame, and criminologists’ conceptions of reintegrative and disintegrative shaming. We summarize recent research investigating the implications of these moral emotions for criminal and risky behavior, with special emphasis on the handful of studies conducted with actual offenders. We conclude with a discussion of implications for treatment in criminal justice settings. PMID:22523475

Scientists' conceptions of scientific inquiry: Revealing a private side of science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reiff, Rebecca R.

Science educators, philosophers, and pre-service teachers have contributed to conceptualizing inquiry but missing from the inquiry forum is an in-depth research study concerning science faculty conceptions of scientific inquiry. The science education literature has tended to focus on certain aspects of doing, teaching, and understanding scientific inquiry without linking these concepts. As a result, conceptions of scientific inquiry have been disjointed and are seemingly unrelated. Furthermore, confusion surrounding the meaning of inquiry has been identified as a reason teachers are not using inquiry in instruction (Welch et al., 1981). Part of the confusion surrounding scientific inquiry is it has been defined differently depending on the context (Colburn, 2000; Lederman, 1998; Shymansky & Yore, 1980; Wilson & Koran, 1976). This lack of a common conception of scientific inquiry is the reason for the timely nature of this research. The result of scientific journeys is not to arrive at a stopping point or the final destination, but to refuel with questions to drive the pursuit of knowledge. A three-member research team conducted Interviews with science faculty members using a semi-structured interview protocol designed to probe the subject's conceptions of scientific inquiry. The participants represented a total of 52 science faculty members from nine science departments (anthropology, biology, chemistry, geology, geography, school of health, physical education and recreation (HPER), medical sciences, physics, and school of environmental science) at a large mid-western research university. The method of analysis used by the team was grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; Glaser & Strauss, 1967), in which case the frequency of concepts, patterns, and themes were coded to categorize scientists' conceptions of scientific inquiry. The results from this study address the following components: understanding and doing scientific inquiry, attributes of scientists engaged in inquiry investigations, the relationship of scientific inquiry to the nature of science, whether the process of scientific inquiry follows the traditional scientific method, and the similarities and differences in conceptualizations of scientific inquiry across science disciplines. These findings represent a private side of science, which can be useful in characterizing key features of scientific inquiry to be incorporated into K--16 teaching practices.

The use of information theory in evolutionary biology.

PubMed

Adami, Christoph

2012-05-01

Information is a key concept in evolutionary biology. Information stored in a biological organism's genome is used to generate the organism and to maintain and control it. Information is also that which evolves. When a population adapts to a local environment, information about this environment is fixed in a representative genome. However, when an environment changes, information can be lost. At the same time, information is processed by animal brains to survive in complex environments, and the capacity for information processing also evolves. Here, I review applications of information theory to the evolution of proteins and to the evolution of information processing in simulated agents that adapt to perform a complex task. © 2012 New York Academy of Sciences.

Constructing Concept Schemes From Astronomical Telegrams Via Natural Language Clustering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Graham, Matthew; Zhang, M.; Djorgovski, S. G.; Donalek, C.; Drake, A. J.; Mahabal, A.

2012-01-01

The rapidly emerging field of time domain astronomy is one of the most exciting and vibrant new research frontiers, ranging in scientific scope from studies of the Solar System to extreme relativistic astrophysics and cosmology. It is being enabled by a new generation of large synoptic digital sky surveys - LSST, PanStarrs, CRTS - that cover large areas of sky repeatedly, looking for transient objects and phenomena. One of the biggest challenges facing these is the automated classification of transient events, a process that needs machine-processible astronomical knowledge. Semantic technologies enable the formal representation of concepts and relations within a particular domain. ATELs (http://www.astronomerstelegram.org) are a commonly-used means for reporting and commenting upon new astronomical observations of transient sources (supernovae, stellar outbursts, blazar flares, etc). However, they are loose and unstructured and employ scientific natural language for description: this makes automated processing of them - a necessity within the next decade with petascale data rates - a challenge. Nevertheless they represent a potentially rich corpus of information that could lead to new and valuable insights into transient phenomena. This project lies in the cutting-edge field of astrosemantics, a branch of astroinformatics, which applies semantic technologies to astronomy. The ATELs have been used to develop an appropriate concept scheme - a representation of the information they contain - for transient astronomy using hierarchical clustering of processed natural language. This allows us to automatically organize ATELs based on the vocabulary used. We conclude that we can use simple algorithms to process and extract meaning from astronomical textual data.

Concept Mapping as a Learning Tool for the Employment Relations Degree

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martinez-Canas, Ricardo; Ruiz-Palomino, Pablo

2011-01-01

Concept mapping is a technique to represent relationships between concepts that can help students to improve their meaningful learning. Using the cognitive theories proposed by Ausubel (1968), concept maps can help instructors and students to enhance their logical thinking and study skills by revealing connections among concepts that can simplify…

Constructing Concept Maps to Encourage Meaningful Learning in Science Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Akcay, Hakan

2017-01-01

The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate science teaching and assessing what is learned via using concept maps. Concept mapping is a technique for visually representing the structure of information. Concept mapping allows students to understand the relationships between concepts of science by creating a visual map of the connections. Concept…

Concept Verification Test - Evaluation of Spacelab/Payload operation concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mcbrayer, R. O.; Watters, H. H.

1977-01-01

The Concept Verification Test (CVT) procedure is used to study Spacelab operational concepts by conducting mission simulations in a General Purpose Laboratory (GPL) which represents a possible design of Spacelab. In conjunction with the laboratory a Mission Development Simulator, a Data Management System Simulator, a Spacelab Simulator, and Shuttle Interface Simulator have been designed. (The Spacelab Simulator is more functionally and physically representative of the Spacelab than the GPL.) Four simulations of Spacelab mission experimentation were performed, two involving several scientific disciplines, one involving life sciences, and the last involving material sciences. The purpose of the CVT project is to support the pre-design and development of payload carriers and payloads, and to coordinate hardware, software, and operational concepts of different developers and users.

Gliomagenesis and neural stem cells: Key role of hypoxia and concept of tumor "neo-niche".

PubMed

Diabira, Sylma; Morandi, Xavier

2008-01-01

Gliomas represent the most common primary brain tumors and the most devastating pathology of the central nervous system. Despite progress in conventional treatments, the prognosis remains dismal. Recent studies have suggested that a glioma brain tumor may arise from a "cancer stem cell". To understand this theory we summarize studies of the concepts of neural stem cell, and its specialized microenvironment, namely the niche which can regulate balanced self-renewal, differentiation and stem cell quiescence. We summarize the molecular mechanism known or postulated to be involved in the disregulation of normal stem cells features allowing them to undergo neoplasic transformation. We seek data pointing out the key role of hypoxia in normal homeostasis of stem cells and in the initiation, development and aggressiveness of gliomas. We develop the concept of tumor special microenvironment and we propose the new concept of neo-niche, surrounding the glioma, in which hypoxia could be a key factor to recruit and deregulate different stem cells for gliogenesis process. Substantial advances in treatment would come from obtaining better knowledge of molecular impairs of this disease.

Law and order: Assessing and enforcing compliance with ontological modeling principles in the Foundational Model of Anatomy

PubMed Central

Zhang, Songmao; Bodenreider, Olivier

2006-01-01

The objective of this study is to provide an operational definition of principles with which well-formed ontologies should comply. We define 15 such principles, related to classification (e.g., no hierarchical cycles are allowed; concepts have a reasonable number of children), incompatible relationships (e.g., two concepts cannot stand both in a taxonomic and partitive relation), dependence among concepts, and the co-dependence of equivalent sets of relations. Implicit relations—embedded in concept names or inferred from a combination of explicit relations—are used in this process in addition to the relations explicitly represented. As a case study, we investigate the degree to which the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA)—a large ontology of anatomy—complies with these 15 principles. The FMA succeeds in complying with all the principles: totally with one and mostly with the others. Reasons for non-compliance are analyzed and suggestions are made for implementing effective enforcement mechanisms in ontology development environments. The limitations of this study are also discussed. PMID:16144698

Threshold Concepts in Biochemistry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loertscher, Jennifer

2011-01-01

Threshold concepts can be identified for any discipline and provide a framework for linking student learning to curricular design. Threshold concepts represent a transformed understanding of a discipline, without which the learner cannot progress and are therefore pivotal in learning in a discipline. Although threshold concepts have been…

Quantifying matrix product state

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhatia, Amandeep Singh; Kumar, Ajay

2018-03-01

Motivated by the concept of quantum finite-state machines, we have investigated their relation with matrix product state of quantum spin systems. Matrix product states play a crucial role in the context of quantum information processing and are considered as a valuable asset for quantum information and communication purpose. It is an effective way to represent states of entangled systems. In this paper, we have designed quantum finite-state machines of one-dimensional matrix product state representations for quantum spin systems.

Modeling the chemistry of complex petroleum mixtures.

PubMed Central

Quann, R J

1998-01-01

Determining the complete molecular composition of petroleum and its refined products is not feasible with current analytical techniques because of the astronomical number of molecular components. Modeling the composition and behavior of such complex mixtures in refinery processes has accordingly evolved along a simplifying concept called lumping. Lumping reduces the complexity of the problem to a manageable form by grouping the entire set of molecular components into a handful of lumps. This traditional approach does not have a molecular basis and therefore excludes important aspects of process chemistry and molecular property fundamentals from the model's formulation. A new approach called structure-oriented lumping has been developed to model the composition and chemistry of complex mixtures at a molecular level. The central concept is to represent an individual molecular or a set of closely related isomers as a mathematical construct of certain specific and repeating structural groups. A complex mixture such as petroleum can then be represented as thousands of distinct molecular components, each having a mathematical identity. This enables the automated construction of large complex reaction networks with tens of thousands of specific reactions for simulating the chemistry of complex mixtures. Further, the method provides a convenient framework for incorporating molecular physical property correlations, existing group contribution methods, molecular thermodynamic properties, and the structure--activity relationships of chemical kinetics in the development of models. PMID:9860903

When language comprehension goes wrong for the right reasons: Good-enough, underspecified, or shallow language processing.

PubMed

Christianson, Kiel

2016-01-01

This paper contains an overview of language processing that can be described as "good enough", "underspecified", or "shallow". The central idea is that a nontrivial proportion of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and miscommunication can be attributed not to random error, but instead to processing preferences of the human language processing system. In other words, the very architecture of the language processor favours certain types of processing errors because in a majority of instances, this "fast and frugal", less effortful processing is good enough to support communication. By way of historical background, connections are made between this relatively recent facet of psycholinguistic study, other recent language processing models, and related concepts in other areas of cognitive science. Finally, the nine papers included in this special issue are introduced as representative of novel explorations of good-enough, or underspecified, language processing.

Hadoop-based implementation of processing medical diagnostic records for visual patient system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Yuanyuan; Shi, Liehang; Xie, Zhe; Zhang, Jianguo

2018-03-01

We have innovatively introduced Visual Patient (VP) concept and method visually to represent and index patient imaging diagnostic records (IDR) in last year SPIE Medical Imaging (SPIE MI 2017), which can enable a doctor to review a large amount of IDR of a patient in a limited appointed time slot. In this presentation, we presented a new approach to design data processing architecture of VP system (VPS) to acquire, process and store various kinds of IDR to build VP instance for each patient in hospital environment based on Hadoop distributed processing structure. We designed this system architecture called Medical Information Processing System (MIPS) with a combination of Hadoop batch processing architecture and Storm stream processing architecture. The MIPS implemented parallel processing of various kinds of clinical data with high efficiency, which come from disparate hospital information system such as PACS, RIS LIS and HIS.

Scientific Process Flowchart Assessment (SPFA): A Method for Evaluating Changes in Understanding and Visualization of the Scientific Process in a Multidisciplinary Student Population

PubMed Central

Wilson, Kristy J.; Rigakos, Bessie

2016-01-01

The scientific process is nonlinear, unpredictable, and ongoing. Assessing the nature of science is difficult with methods that rely on Likert-scale or multiple-choice questions. This study evaluated conceptions about the scientific process using student-created visual representations that we term “flowcharts.” The methodology, Scientific Process Flowchart Assessment (SPFA), consisted of a prompt and rubric that was designed to assess students’ understanding of the scientific process. Forty flowcharts representing a multidisciplinary group without intervention and 26 flowcharts representing pre- and postinstruction were evaluated over five dimensions: connections, experimental design, reasons for doing science, nature of science, and interconnectivity. Pre to post flowcharts showed a statistically significant improvement in the number of items and ratings for the dimensions. Comparison of the terms used and connections between terms on student flowcharts revealed an enhanced and more nuanced understanding of the scientific process, especially in the areas of application to society and communication within the scientific community. We propose that SPFA can be used in a variety of circumstances, including in the determination of what curricula or interventions would be useful in a course or program, in the assessment of curriculum, or in the evaluation of students performing research projects. PMID:27856551

Embryo dignity: the status and juridical protection of the in vitro embryo.

PubMed

Raposo, Vera Lúcia; Osuna, Eduardo

2007-12-01

In the context of research and reproduction, the status of the human in vitro embryo ranges from being regarded as a person to being regarded as mere property. As regards the first view, one extreme of the spectrum for offering possible legal protection considers that the embryo constitutes a legal person from the moment of conception. For opponents of this view life is a continuum that runs from conception until death. In this process one of the most important stages is birth, the reason being that birth represents the transition between a potential person and a person. The term "embryo" is used to express the being that exists after fusion of the egg and a spermatozoon during the process of embryogenesis until it reaches eight weeks, after which time it is termed a foetus. The embryo's life is recognized as a constitutional value which deserves juridical protection, but not as a person. It only becomes a person with birth.

Intent Specifications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Leveson, Nancy G.

1995-01-01

We have been investigating the implications of using abstractions based on intent rather than the aggregation and information-hiding abstractions commonly used in software en- gineering: Cognitive psychologists have shown that intent abstraction is consistent with human problem-solving processes. We believe that new types of specifications and designs based on this concept can assist in understanding and specifying requirements, capturing the most important design rationale information in an efficient and economical way, and supporting the process of identifying and analyzing required changes to minimize the introduction of errors. The goal of hierarchical abstraction is to allow both top-down and bottom-up reasoning about a complex system. In computer science, we have made much use of (1) part-whole abstractions where each level of a hierarchy represents an aggregation of the components at a lower level and of (2) information-hiding abstractions where each level contains the same conceptual information but hides some details about the concepts, that is, each level is a refinement of the information at a higher level.

Using rock art as an alternative science pedagogy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Allen, Casey D.

College-level and seventh-grade science students were studied to understand the power of a field index, the Rock Art Stability Index (RASI), for student learning about complex biophysical environmental processes. In order to determine if the studied population was representative, 584 college and seventh-grade students undertook a concept mapping exercise after they had learned basic weathering science via in-class lecture. Of this large group, a subset of 322 college students and 13 seventh-grade students also learned RASI through a field experience involving the analysis of rock weathering associated with petroglyphs. After learning weathering through RASI, students completed another concept map. This was a college population where roughly 46% had never taken a "lab science" course and nearly 22% were from minority (non-white) populations. Analysis of student learning through the lens of actor-network theory revealed that when landscape is viewed as process (i.e. many practices), science education embodies both an alternative science philosophy and an alternative materialistic worldview. When RASI components were analyzed after only lecture, student understanding of weathering displayed little connection between weathering form and weathering process. After using RASI in the field however, nearly all students made illustrative concept maps rich in connections between weathering form and weathering process for all subcomponents of RASI. When taken as an aggregate, and measured by an average concept map score, learning increased by almost 14%, Among college minority students, the average score increase approached 23%. Among female students, the average score increase was 16%. For seventh-grade students, scores increased by nearly 36%. After testing for normalcy with Kolmogorov-Smirnov, t-tests reveal that all of these increases were highly statistically significant at p<0.001. The growth in learning weathering science by minority students, as compared to non-minority students, was also statistically significant at p<0.01. These findings reveal the power of field work through RASI to strengthen cognitive linkages between complex biophysical processes and the corresponding rock weathering forms.

How Effective Is Example Generation for Learning Declarative Concepts?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rawson, Katherine A.; Dunlosky, John

2016-01-01

Declarative concepts (i.e., key terms and corresponding definitions for abstract concepts) represent foundational knowledge that students learn in many content domains. Thus, investigating techniques to enhance concept learning is of critical importance. Various theoretical accounts support the expectation that example generation will serve this…

Practical Strategies for Integrating Final Ecosystem Goods and ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The concept of Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS) explicitly connects ecosystem services to the people that benefit from them. This report presents a number of practical strategies for incorporating FEGS, and more broadly ecosystem services, into the decision-making process. Whether a decision process is in early or late stages, or whether a process includes informal or formal decision analysis, there are multiple points where ecosystem services concepts can be integrated. This report uses Structured Decision Making (SDM) as an organizing framework to illustrate the role ecosystem services can play in a values-focused decision-process, including: • Clarifying the decision context: Ecosystem services can help clarify the potential impacts of an issue on natural resources together with their spatial and temporal extent based on supply and delivery of those services, and help identify beneficiaries for inclusion as stakeholders in the deliberative process. • Defining objectives and performance measures: Ecosystem services may directly represent stakeholder objectives, or may be means toward achieving other objectives. • Creating alternatives: Ecosystem services can bring to light creative alternatives for achieving other social, economic, health, or general well-being objectives. • Estimating consequences: Ecosystem services assessments can implement ecological production functions (EPFs) and ecological benefits functions (EBFs) to link decision alt

Geochemistry and the understanding of ground-water systems

USGS Publications Warehouse

Glynn, Pierre D.; Plummer, Niel

2005-01-01

Geochemistry has contributed significantly to the understanding of ground-water systems over the last 50 years. Historic advances include development of the hydrochemical facies concept, application of equilibrium theory, investigation of redox processes, and radiocarbon dating. Other hydrochemical concepts, tools, and techniques have helped elucidate mechanisms of flow and transport in ground-water systems, and have helped unlock an archive of paleoenvironmental information. Hydrochemical and isotopic information can be used to interpret the origin and mode of ground-water recharge, refine estimates of time scales of recharge and ground-water flow, decipher reactive processes, provide paleohydrological information, and calibrate ground-water flow models. Progress needs to be made in obtaining representative samples. Improvements are needed in the interpretation of the information obtained, and in the construction and interpretation of numerical models utilizing hydrochemical data. The best approach will ensure an optimized iterative process between field data collection and analysis, interpretation, and the application of forward, inverse, and statistical modeling tools. Advances are anticipated from microbiological investigations, the characterization of natural organics, isotopic fingerprinting, applications of dissolved gas measurements, and the fields of reaction kinetics and coupled processes. A thermodynamic perspective is offered that could facilitate the comparison and understanding of the multiple physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting ground-water systems.

Intelligent artifact classification for ambulatory physiological signals.

PubMed

Sweeney, Kevin T; Leamy, Darren J; Ward, Tomas E; McLoone, Sean

2010-01-01

Connected health represents an increasingly important model for health-care delivery. The concept is heavily reliant on technology and in particular remote physiological monitoring. One of the principal challenges is the maintenance of high quality data streams which must be collected with minimally intrusive, inexpensive sensor systems operating in difficult conditions. Ambulatory monitoring represents one of the most challenging signal acquisition challenges of all in that data is collected as the patient engages in normal activities of everyday living. Data thus collected suffers from considerable corruption as a result of artifact, much of it induced by motion and this has a bearing on its utility for diagnostic purposes. We propose a model for ambulatory signal recording in which the data collected is accompanied by labeling indicating the quality of the collected signal. As motion is such an important source of artifact we demonstrate the concept in this case with a quality of signal measure derived from motion sensing technology viz. accelerometers. We further demonstrate how different types of artifact might be tagged to inform artifact reduction signal processing elements during subsequent signal analysis. This is demonstrated through the use of multiple accelerometers which allow the algorithm to distinguish between disturbance of the sensor relative to the underlying tissue and movement of this tissue. A brain monitoring experiment utilizing EEG and fNIRS is used to illustrate the concept.

Basic Concepts in the Taxonomy of Health-Related Behaviors, Habits and Lifestyle

PubMed Central

Salvador-Carulla, Luis; Alonso, Federico; Gomez, Rafael; Walsh, Carolyn O.; Almenara, José; Ruiz, Mencía; Abellán, María José

2013-01-01

Background: Health-related Habits (HrH) are a major priority in healthcare. However there is little agreement on whether exercise, diet, smoking or dental hygiene are better described as lifestyles, habits or behaviors, and on what is their hierarchical relationship. This research is aimed at representing the basic concepts which are assumed to constitute the conceptual framework enabling us to interpret and organize the field of HrH. Methods: A group of 29 experts with different backgrounds agreed on the definition and hierarchy of HrH following an iterative process which involved framing analysis and nominal group techniques. Results: Formal definitions of health-related behavior, habit, life-style and life-style profile were produced. In addition a series of basic descriptors were identified: health reserve, capital, risk and load. Six main categories of HrH were chosen based on relevance to longevity: diet/exercise, vitality/stress, sleep, cognition, substance use and other risk. Attributes of HrH are clinical meaningfulness, quantifiability, temporal stability, associated morbidity, and unitarity (non-redundancy). Two qualifiers (polarity and stages of change) have also been described. Conclusions: The concepts represented here lay the groundwork for the development of clinical and policy tools related to HrH and lifestyle. An adaptation of this system to define targets of health interventions and to develop the classification of person factors in ICF may be needed in the future. PMID:23670578

[Sexual attraction: a concept analysis using an evolutionary perspective].

PubMed

Yang, Shu-Chin; Chu, Chun-Hong; Lu, Zxy-Yann Jane

2015-02-01

Medical technology has transformed the body image of women and altered perceptions of beauty and sexual attraction. While "sexual attraction" is a fundamental concept in sexology, the characteristics of this concept have not been studied in the field of nursing. Because nurses provide advice and health education for women, it is essential to clarify the concept of sexual attraction for the benefit of related nursing research and for the further development of nursing knowledge. This study explores the concept of sexual attraction in a Taiwanese social context using concept analysis based on an evolutionary perspective. Inductive inquiry is used to compare and contrast articles from the academic literature, magazines, and newspapers, and data from participant observation and interviews are used to generate exemplars. The process by which the concept of sexual attraction has evolved over time is captured from three distinct aspects: significance, use, and application. The definitional statement of sexual attraction includes the five dimensions of: 1. sexual-oriented psychological dynamics; 2. personal aesthetics and sensory experience; 3. instinct body forces; 4. body language of self; and 5. social and cultural norms. This study scrutinized the changes in attributes that emphasize the biological, objectified body, and stereotyped gender roles of women. Further directions for research and nursing knowledge development are suggested. Examples include identifying the changes in the concept of sexual attraction that result from technological advancement and further clarifying the experiential knowledge of sexual attraction that represents the selfhood and independence of women in Taiwan.

European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network Representatives' Conceptions of the Role of Information and Communication Technologies Related to National Guidance Policies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kettunen, Jaana; Vuorinen, Raimo; Ruusuvirta, Outi

2016-01-01

This article reports findings from a phenomenographic investigation into European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network representatives' conceptions of the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) related to national lifelong guidance policies. The role of ICT in relation to national lifelong guidance policies was conceived as (1)…

A novel physical eco-hydrological model concept for preferential flow based on experimental applications.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jackisch, Conrad; van Schaik, Loes; Graeff, Thomas; Zehe, Erwin

2014-05-01

Preferential flow through macropores often determines hydrological characteristics - especially regarding runoff generation and fast transport of solutes. Macropore settings may yet be very different in nature and dynamics, depending on their origin. While biogenic structures follow activity cycles (e.g. earth worms) and population conditions (e.g. roots), pedogenic and geogenic structures may depend on water stress (e.g. cracks) or large events (e.g. flushed voids between skeleton and soil pipes) or simply persist (e.g. bedrock interface). On the one hand, such dynamic site characteristics can be observed in seasonal changes in its reaction to precipitation. On the other hand, sprinkling experiments accompanied by tracers or time-lapse 3D Ground-Penetrating-Radar are suitable tools to determine infiltration patterns and macropore configuration. However, model representation of the macropore-matrix system is still problematic, because models either rely on effective parameters (assuming well-mixed state) or on explicit advection strongly simplifying or neglecting interaction with the diffusive flow domain. Motivated by the dynamic nature of macropores, we present a novel model approach for interacting diffusive and advective water, solutes and energy transport in structured soils. It solely relies on scale- and process-aware observables. A representative set of macropores (data from sprinkling experiments) determines the process model scale through 1D advective domains. These are connected to a 2D matrix domain which is defined by pedo-physical retention properties. Water is represented as particles. Diffusive flow is governed by a 2D random walk of these particles while advection may take place in the macropore domain. Macropore-matrix interaction is computed as dissipation of the advective momentum of a particle by its experienced drag from the matrix domain. Through a representation of matrix and macropores as connected diffusive and advective domains for water transport we open up double domain concepts linking porescale physics to preferential macroscale fingerprints without effective parameterisation or mixing assumptions. Moreover, solute transport, energy balance aspects and lateral heterogeneity in soil moisture distribution are intrinsically captured. In addition, macropore and matrix domain settings may change over time based on physical and stochastic observations. The representativity concept allows scaleability from plotscale to the lower mesoscale.

Narrative Constructions for the Organization of Self Experience: Proof of Concept via Embodied Robotics

PubMed Central

Mealier, Anne-Laure; Pointeau, Gregoire; Mirliaz, Solène; Ogawa, Kenji; Finlayson, Mark; Dominey, Peter F.

2017-01-01

It has been proposed that starting from meaning that the child derives directly from shared experience with others, adult narrative enriches this meaning and its structure, providing causal links between unseen intentional states and actions. This would require a means for representing meaning from experience—a situation model—and a mechanism that allows information to be extracted from sentences and mapped onto the situation model that has been derived from experience, thus enriching that representation. We present a hypothesis and theory concerning how the language processing infrastructure for grammatical constructions can naturally be extended to narrative constructions to provide a mechanism for using language to enrich meaning derived from physical experience. Toward this aim, the grammatical construction models are augmented with additional structures for representing relations between events across sentences. Simulation results demonstrate proof of concept for how the narrative construction model supports multiple successive levels of meaning creation which allows the system to learn about the intentionality of mental states, and argument substitution which allows extensions to metaphorical language and analogical problem solving. Cross-linguistic validity of the system is demonstrated in Japanese. The narrative construction model is then integrated into the cognitive system of a humanoid robot that provides the memory systems and world-interaction required for representing meaning in a situation model. In this context proof of concept is demonstrated for how the system enriches meaning in the situation model that has been directly derived from experience. In terms of links to empirical data, the model predicts strong usage based effects: that is, that the narrative constructions used by children will be highly correlated with those that they experience. It also relies on the notion of narrative or discourse function words. Both of these are validated in the experimental literature. PMID:28861011

Narrative Constructions for the Organization of Self Experience: Proof of Concept via Embodied Robotics.

PubMed

Mealier, Anne-Laure; Pointeau, Gregoire; Mirliaz, Solène; Ogawa, Kenji; Finlayson, Mark; Dominey, Peter F

2017-01-01

It has been proposed that starting from meaning that the child derives directly from shared experience with others, adult narrative enriches this meaning and its structure, providing causal links between unseen intentional states and actions. This would require a means for representing meaning from experience-a situation model-and a mechanism that allows information to be extracted from sentences and mapped onto the situation model that has been derived from experience, thus enriching that representation. We present a hypothesis and theory concerning how the language processing infrastructure for grammatical constructions can naturally be extended to narrative constructions to provide a mechanism for using language to enrich meaning derived from physical experience. Toward this aim, the grammatical construction models are augmented with additional structures for representing relations between events across sentences. Simulation results demonstrate proof of concept for how the narrative construction model supports multiple successive levels of meaning creation which allows the system to learn about the intentionality of mental states, and argument substitution which allows extensions to metaphorical language and analogical problem solving. Cross-linguistic validity of the system is demonstrated in Japanese. The narrative construction model is then integrated into the cognitive system of a humanoid robot that provides the memory systems and world-interaction required for representing meaning in a situation model. In this context proof of concept is demonstrated for how the system enriches meaning in the situation model that has been directly derived from experience. In terms of links to empirical data, the model predicts strong usage based effects: that is, that the narrative constructions used by children will be highly correlated with those that they experience. It also relies on the notion of narrative or discourse function words. Both of these are validated in the experimental literature.

Raster Data Partitioning for Supporting Distributed GIS Processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nguyen Thai, B.; Olasz, A.

2015-08-01

In the geospatial sector big data concept also has already impact. Several studies facing originally computer science techniques applied in GIS processing of huge amount of geospatial data. In other research studies geospatial data is considered as it were always been big data (Lee and Kang, 2015). Nevertheless, we can prove data acquisition methods have been improved substantially not only the amount, but the resolution of raw data in spectral, spatial and temporal aspects as well. A significant portion of big data is geospatial data, and the size of such data is growing rapidly at least by 20% every year (Dasgupta, 2013). The produced increasing volume of raw data, in different format, representation and purpose the wealth of information derived from this data sets represents only valuable results. However, the computing capability and processing speed rather tackle with limitations, even if semi-automatic or automatic procedures are aimed on complex geospatial data (Kristóf et al., 2014). In late times, distributed computing has reached many interdisciplinary areas of computer science inclusive of remote sensing and geographic information processing approaches. Cloud computing even more requires appropriate processing algorithms to be distributed and handle geospatial big data. Map-Reduce programming model and distributed file systems have proven their capabilities to process non GIS big data. But sometimes it's inconvenient or inefficient to rewrite existing algorithms to Map-Reduce programming model, also GIS data can not be partitioned as text-based data by line or by bytes. Hence, we would like to find an alternative solution for data partitioning, data distribution and execution of existing algorithms without rewriting or with only minor modifications. This paper focuses on technical overview of currently available distributed computing environments, as well as GIS data (raster data) partitioning, distribution and distributed processing of GIS algorithms. A proof of concept implementation have been made for raster data partitioning, distribution and processing. The first results on performance have been compared against commercial software ERDAS IMAGINE 2011 and 2014. Partitioning methods heavily depend on application areas, therefore we may consider data partitioning as a preprocessing step before applying processing services on data. As a proof of concept we have implemented a simple tile-based partitioning method splitting an image into smaller grids (NxM tiles) and comparing the processing time to existing methods by NDVI calculation. The concept is demonstrated using own development open source processing framework.

Conceptions and Practices of Assessment: A Case of Teachers Representing Improvement Conception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Azis, Astuti

2015-01-01

Despite numerous quantitative studies on teachers' conceptions and practices of assessment, little research exists regarding the unique assessment environment of Indonesia. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative data to examine how Indonesian junior high school teachers understand assessment and how their conceptions of assessment…

A Quantitative Empirical Analysis of the Abstract/Concrete Distinction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hill, Felix; Korhonen, Anna; Bentz, Christian

2014-01-01

This study presents original evidence that abstract and concrete concepts are organized and represented differently in the mind, based on analyses of thousands of concepts in publicly available data sets and computational resources. First, we show that abstract and concrete concepts have differing patterns of association with other concepts.…

Concept Mapping: A Graphical System for Understanding the Relationship between Concepts. ERIC Digest.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plotnick, Eric

This ERIC Digest discusses concept mapping, a technique for representing the structure of information visually. Concept mapping can be used to brainstorm, design complex structures, communicate complex ideas, aid learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge, and assess understanding or diagnose misunderstanding. Visual representation…

Using Concept Maps to Assess Interdisciplinary Integration of Green Engineering Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borrego, Maura; Newswander, Chad B.; McNair, Lisa D.; McGinnis, Sean; Paretti, Marie C.

2009-01-01

Engineering education, like many fields, has started to explore the benefits of concept maps as an assessment technique for knowledge integration. Because they allow students to graphically link topics and represent complex interconnections among diverse concepts, we argue that concept maps are particularly appropriate for assessing…

Generalized memory associativity in a network model for the neuroses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wedemann, Roseli S.; Donangelo, Raul; de Carvalho, Luís A. V.

2009-03-01

We review concepts introduced in earlier work, where a neural network mechanism describes some mental processes in neurotic pathology and psychoanalytic working-through, as associative memory functioning, according to the findings of Freud. We developed a complex network model, where modules corresponding to sensorial and symbolic memories interact, representing unconscious and conscious mental processes. The model illustrates Freud's idea that consciousness is related to symbolic and linguistic memory activity in the brain. We have introduced a generalization of the Boltzmann machine to model memory associativity. Model behavior is illustrated with simulations and some of its properties are analyzed with methods from statistical mechanics.

Does the concept of safety culture help or hinder systems thinking in safety?

PubMed

Reiman, Teemu; Rollenhagen, Carl

2014-07-01

The concept of safety culture has become established in safety management applications in all major safety-critical domains. The idea that safety culture somehow represents a "systemic view" on safety is seldom explicitly spoken out, but nevertheless seem to linger behind many safety culture discourses. However, in this paper we argue that the "new" contribution to safety management from safety culture never really became integrated with classical engineering principles and concepts. This integration would have been necessary for the development of a more genuine systems-oriented view on safety; e.g. a conception of safety in which human, technological, organisational and cultural factors are understood as mutually interacting elements. Without of this integration, researchers and the users of the various tools and methods associated with safety culture have sometimes fostered a belief that "safety culture" in fact represents such a systemic view about safety. This belief is, however, not backed up by theoretical or empirical evidence. It is true that safety culture, at least in some sense, represents a holistic term-a totality of factors that include human, organisational and technological aspects. However, the departure for such safety culture models is still human and organisational factors rather than technology (or safety) itself. The aim of this paper is to critically review the various uses of the concept of safety culture as representing a systemic view on safety. The article will take a look at the concepts of culture and safety culture based on previous studies, and outlines in more detail the theoretical challenges in safety culture as a systems concept. The paper also presents recommendations on how to make safety culture more systemic. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

"Understanding" medical school curriculum content using KnowledgeMap.

PubMed

Denny, Joshua C; Smithers, Jeffrey D; Miller, Randolph A; Spickard, Anderson

2003-01-01

To describe the development and evaluation of computational tools to identify concepts within medical curricular documents, using information derived from the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The long-term goal of the KnowledgeMap (KM) project is to provide faculty and students with an improved ability to develop, review, and integrate components of the medical school curriculum. The KM concept identifier uses lexical resources partially derived from the UMLS (SPECIALIST lexicon and Metathesaurus), heuristic language processing techniques, and an empirical scoring algorithm. KM differentiates among potentially matching Metathesaurus concepts within a source document. The authors manually identified important "gold standard" biomedical concepts within selected medical school full-content lecture documents and used these documents to compare KM concept recognition with that of a known state-of-the-art "standard"-the National Library of Medicine's MetaMap program. The number of "gold standard" concepts in each lecture document identified by either KM or MetaMap, and the cause of each failure or relative success in a random subset of documents. For 4,281 "gold standard" concepts, MetaMap matched 78% and KM 82%. Precision for "gold standard" concepts was 85% for MetaMap and 89% for KM. The heuristics of KM accurately matched acronyms, concepts underspecified in the document, and ambiguous matches. The most frequent cause of matching failures was absence of target concepts from the UMLS Metathesaurus. The prototypic KM system provided an encouraging rate of concept extraction for representative medical curricular texts. Future versions of KM should be evaluated for their ability to allow administrators, lecturers, and students to navigate through the medical curriculum to locate redundancies, find interrelated information, and identify omissions. In addition, the ability of KM to meet specific, personal information needs should be assessed.

Modern monitoring with preventive role for a production capacity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tomescu, Cristian; Lupu, Constantin; Szollosi-Mota, Andrei; Rădoi, Florin; Chiuzan, Emeric

2016-10-01

In the process of exploitation of coal, the appearance of the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion represents a risk factor identified by the subjective and objective the causes, which requires the development of appropriate prevention methods. In order to control the risk, shall be drawn up incipient intervention solutions with preventive function, which consist in the direct and indirect measurement of the working environment, of the temperature of the coal massif and of the concentrations of gases, O2, CO2, CO. Monitoring instruments which fall within the modern concept for proactively anticipation is represented by thermography applied in the exploitation of coal and by the gas chromatograph for the analysis of the air collected. The drawing up of thermal maps on the basis of the thermograms and analysis of the chromatograms resulted represents the binome for assessing and treatments of the spontaneous combustion risk, which will be discussed in this work.

A reusable knowledge acquisition shell: KASH

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Westphal, Christopher; Williams, Stephen; Keech, Virginia

1991-01-01

KASH (Knowledge Acquisition SHell) is proposed to assist a knowledge engineer by providing a set of utilities for constructing knowledge acquisition sessions based on interviewing techniques. The information elicited from domain experts during the sessions is guided by a question dependency graph (QDG). The QDG defined by the knowledge engineer, consists of a series of control questions about the domain that are used to organize the knowledge of an expert. The content information supplies by the expert, in response to the questions, is represented in the form of a concept map. These maps can be constructed in a top-down or bottom-up manner by the QDG and used by KASH to generate the rules for a large class of expert system domains. Additionally, the concept maps can support the representation of temporal knowledge. The high degree of reusability encountered in the QDG and concept maps can vastly reduce the development times and costs associated with producing intelligent decision aids, training programs, and process control functions.

Global cost and weight evaluation of fuselage keel design concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Flynn, B. W.; Morris, M. R.; Metschan, S. L.; Swanson, G. D.; Smith, P. J.; Griess, K. H.; Schramm, M. R.; Humphrey, R. J.

1993-01-01

The Boeing program entitled Advanced Technology Composite Aircraft Structure (ATCAS) is focused on the application of affordable composite technology to pressurized fuselage structure of future aircraft. As part of this effort, a design study was conducted on the keel section of the aft fuselage. A design build team (DBT) approach was used to identify and evaluate several design concepts which incorporated different material systems, fabrication processes, structural configurations, and subassembly details. The design concepts were developed in sufficient detail to accurately assess their potential for cost and weight savings as compared with a metal baseline representing current wide body technology. The cost and weight results, along with an appraisal of performance and producibility risks, are used to identify a globally optimized keel design; one which offers the most promising cost and weight advantages over metal construction. Lastly, an assessment is given of the potential for further cost and weight reductions of the selected keel design during local optimization.

Chronic disease self-management: a hybrid concept analysis.

PubMed

Miller, Wendy R; Lasiter, Sue; Bartlett Ellis, Rebecca; Buelow, Janice M

2015-01-01

Chronic diseases require chronic disease self-management (CDSM). Existing CDSM interventions, while improving outcomes, often do not lead to long-lasting effects. To render existing and new CDSM interventions more effective, an exploration of the concept of CDSM from both the literature and patient perspectives is needed. The purpose of this study was to describe the current conceptualization of CDSM in the literature, identify potential inadequacies in this conceptualization based on a comparison of literature- and patient-based CDSM descriptions, and to offer a more comprehensive definition of CDSM. A hybrid concept analysis was completed. In the literature, CDSM is defined as behaviors influenced by individual characteristics. Patients in the fieldwork phase discussed aspects of CDSM not well represented in the literature. CDSM is a complex process involving behaviors at multiple levels of a person's environment. Pilot work to develop and test CDSM interventions based on both individual and external characteristics is needed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Simulation of Nonisothermal Consolidation of Saturated Soils Based on a Thermodynamic Model

PubMed Central

Cheng, Xiaohui

2013-01-01

Based on the nonequilibrium thermodynamics, a thermo-hydro-mechanical coupling model for saturated soils is established, including a constitutive model without such concepts as yield surface and flow rule. An elastic potential energy density function is defined to derive a hyperelastic relation among the effective stress, the elastic strain, and the dry density. The classical linear non-equilibrium thermodynamic theory is employed to quantitatively describe the unrecoverable energy processes like the nonelastic deformation development in materials by the concepts of dissipative force and dissipative flow. In particular the granular fluctuation, which represents the kinetic energy fluctuation and elastic potential energy fluctuation at particulate scale caused by the irregular mutual movement between particles, is introduced in the model and described by the concept of granular entropy. Using this model, the nonisothermal consolidation of saturated clays under cyclic thermal loadings is simulated in this paper to validate the model. The results show that the nonisothermal consolidation is heavily OCR dependent and unrecoverable. PMID:23983623

Simulation of nonisothermal consolidation of saturated soils based on a thermodynamic model.

PubMed

Zhang, Zhichao; Cheng, Xiaohui

2013-01-01

Based on the nonequilibrium thermodynamics, a thermo-hydro-mechanical coupling model for saturated soils is established, including a constitutive model without such concepts as yield surface and flow rule. An elastic potential energy density function is defined to derive a hyperelastic relation among the effective stress, the elastic strain, and the dry density. The classical linear non-equilibrium thermodynamic theory is employed to quantitatively describe the unrecoverable energy processes like the nonelastic deformation development in materials by the concepts of dissipative force and dissipative flow. In particular the granular fluctuation, which represents the kinetic energy fluctuation and elastic potential energy fluctuation at particulate scale caused by the irregular mutual movement between particles, is introduced in the model and described by the concept of granular entropy. Using this model, the nonisothermal consolidation of saturated clays under cyclic thermal loadings is simulated in this paper to validate the model. The results show that the nonisothermal consolidation is heavily OCR dependent and unrecoverable.

Informed decision-making with and for people with dementia - efficacy of the PRODECIDE education program for legal representatives: protocol of a randomized controlled trial (PRODECIDE-RCT).

PubMed

Lühnen, Julia; Haastert, Burkhard; Mühlhauser, Ingrid; Richter, Tanja

2017-09-15

In Germany, the guardianship system provides adults who are no longer able to handle their own affairs a court-appointed legal representative, for support without restriction of legal capacity. Although these representatives only rarely are qualified in healthcare, they nevertheless play decisive roles in the decision-making processes for people with dementia. Previously, we developed an education program (PRODECIDE) to address this shortcoming and tested it for feasibility. Typical, autonomy-restricting decisions in the care of people with dementia-namely, using percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) or physical restrains (PR), or the prescription of antipsychotic drugs (AP)-were the subject areas trained. The training course aims to enhance the competency of legal representatives in informed decision-making. In this study, we will evaluate the efficacy of the PRODECIDE education program. A randomized controlled trial with a six-month follow-up will be conducted to compare the PRODECIDE education program with standard care, enrolling legal representatives (N = 216). The education program lasts 10 h and comprises four modules: A, decision-making processes and methods; and B, C and D, evidence-based knowledge about PEG, PR and AP, respectively. The primary outcome measure is knowledge, which is operationalized as the understanding of decision-making processes in healthcare affairs and in setting realistic expectations about benefits and harms of PEG, PR and AP in people with dementia. Secondary outcomes are sufficient and sustainable knowledge and percentage of persons concerned affected by PEG, FEM or AP. A qualitative process evaluation will be performed. Additionally, to support implementation, a concept for translating the educational contents into e-learning modules will be developed. The study results will show whether the efficacy of the education program could justify its implementation into the regular training curricula for legal representatives. Additionally, it will determine whether an e-learning course provides a valuable backup or even alternative learning strategy. TRN: ISRCTN17960111 , Date: 01/06/2017.

In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment for the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elliott, J.; Fries, M.; Love, S.; Sellar, R. G.; Voecks, G.; Wilson, D.

2015-10-01

The Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission (ARCM) represents a unique opportunity to perform in-situ testing of concepts that could lead to full-scale exploitation of asteroids for their valuable resources [1]. This paper describes a concept for an astronautoperated "suitcase" experiment to would demonstrate asteroid volatile extraction using a solar-heated oven and integral cold trap in a configuration scalable to full-size asteroids. Conversion of liberated water into H2 and O2 products would also be demonstrated through an integral processing and storage unit. The plan also includes development of a local prospecting system consisting of a suit-mounted multi-spectral imager to aid the crew in choosing optimal samples, both for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) and for potential return to Earth.

Conditional Probabilities and Collapse in Quantum Measurements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Laura, Roberto; Vanni, Leonardo

2008-09-01

We show that including both the system and the apparatus in the quantum description of the measurement process, and using the concept of conditional probabilities, it is possible to deduce the statistical operator of the system after a measurement with a given result, which gives the probability distribution for all possible consecutive measurements on the system. This statistical operator, representing the state of the system after the first measurement, is in general not the same that would be obtained using the postulate of collapse.

Biorefineries--multi product processes.

PubMed

Kamm, B; Kamm, M

2007-01-01

The development of biorefineries represents the key for access to an integrated production of food, feed, chemicals, materials, goods, and fuels of the future [1]. Biorefineries combine the necessary technologies of the biogenic raw materials with those of intermediates and final products. The main focus is directed at the precursors carbohydrates, lignin, oils, and proteins and the combination between biotechnological and chemical conversion of substances. Currently the lignocellulosic feedstock biorefinery, green biorefinery, whole corn biorefinery, and the so-called two-platform concept are favored in research, development, and industrial implementation.

Prototype of a Graphical CONOPS (Concept of Operations) Development Environment for Agile Systems Engineering

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-08-30

H98230-08-D-0171 TTO 0025, RT0030a Report No. 2013-TR-030-2 August 30, 2013 UNCLASSIFIED - Open interfaces Cost: - per seat - to deploy...site-wide and server licenses may help mitigate concerns that per seat licenses may incur. Although not stated as one of the “critical...process shown in Figure 4, each list was designated as a scheduled sprint, and one was labeled Backlog. Figure 5 represents a Trello board with three

Two types of rate-determining step in chemical and biochemical processes.

PubMed Central

Yagisawa, S

1989-01-01

Close examination of the concept of the rate-determining step (RDS) shows that there are two types of RDS depending on the definition of 'rate'. One is represented by the highest peak of the free-energy diagram of consecutive reactions and holds true where the rate is defined in terms of the concentration of the first reactant. The other is represented by the peak showing the maximum free-energy difference, where the free-energy difference is the height of a peak measured from the bottom of any preceding troughs, where the definition of the rate is in terms of the total reactant concentration including intermediates. There are no criteria a priori for selecting one of them. PMID:2597141

Representing life as opposed to being: the bio-objectification process of the HeLa cells and its relation to personalized medicine

PubMed Central

Svalastog, Anna Lydia; Martinelli, Lucia

2013-01-01

The immortal HeLa cells case is an intriguing example of bio-objectification processes with great scientific, social, and symbolic impacts. These cells generate questions about representation, significance, and value of the exceptional, variety, individuality, and property. Of frightening (a lethal cancer) and emarginated (a black, poor woman) origins, with their ability to “contaminate” cultures and to “spread” into spaces for becoming of extraordinary value for human knowledge, well-being, and economy advancements, HeLa cells have represented humanity, and emphasized the importance of individual as a core concept of the personalized medicine. Starting from the process leading from HeLa “cells” to HeLa “bio-objects,” we focus on their importance as high quality bio-specimen. We discuss the tension between phenomenological characteristic of fundamental biological research and the variety of material and methodologies in epidemiology and personalized medicine. The emerging methodologies and societal changes reflect present EU policies and lead toward a new paradigm of science. PMID:23986283

New parsimonious simulation methods and tools to assess future food and environmental security of farm populations

PubMed Central

Antle, John M.; Stoorvogel, Jetse J.; Valdivia, Roberto O.

2014-01-01

This article presents conceptual and empirical foundations for new parsimonious simulation models that are being used to assess future food and environmental security of farm populations. The conceptual framework integrates key features of the biophysical and economic processes on which the farming systems are based. The approach represents a methodological advance by coupling important behavioural processes, for example, self-selection in adaptive responses to technological and environmental change, with aggregate processes, such as changes in market supply and demand conditions or environmental conditions as climate. Suitable biophysical and economic data are a critical limiting factor in modelling these complex systems, particularly for the characterization of out-of-sample counterfactuals in ex ante analyses. Parsimonious, population-based simulation methods are described that exploit available observational, experimental, modelled and expert data. The analysis makes use of a new scenario design concept called representative agricultural pathways. A case study illustrates how these methods can be used to assess food and environmental security. The concluding section addresses generalizations of parametric forms and linkages of regional models to global models. PMID:24535388

New parsimonious simulation methods and tools to assess future food and environmental security of farm populations.

PubMed

Antle, John M; Stoorvogel, Jetse J; Valdivia, Roberto O

2014-04-05

This article presents conceptual and empirical foundations for new parsimonious simulation models that are being used to assess future food and environmental security of farm populations. The conceptual framework integrates key features of the biophysical and economic processes on which the farming systems are based. The approach represents a methodological advance by coupling important behavioural processes, for example, self-selection in adaptive responses to technological and environmental change, with aggregate processes, such as changes in market supply and demand conditions or environmental conditions as climate. Suitable biophysical and economic data are a critical limiting factor in modelling these complex systems, particularly for the characterization of out-of-sample counterfactuals in ex ante analyses. Parsimonious, population-based simulation methods are described that exploit available observational, experimental, modelled and expert data. The analysis makes use of a new scenario design concept called representative agricultural pathways. A case study illustrates how these methods can be used to assess food and environmental security. The concluding section addresses generalizations of parametric forms and linkages of regional models to global models.

A knowledge-driven approach to biomedical document conceptualization.

PubMed

Zheng, Hai-Tao; Borchert, Charles; Jiang, Yong

2010-06-01

Biomedical document conceptualization is the process of clustering biomedical documents based on ontology-represented domain knowledge. The result of this process is the representation of the biomedical documents by a set of key concepts and their relationships. Most of clustering methods cluster documents based on invariant domain knowledge. The objective of this work is to develop an effective method to cluster biomedical documents based on various user-specified ontologies, so that users can exploit the concept structures of documents more effectively. We develop a flexible framework to allow users to specify the knowledge bases, in the form of ontologies. Based on the user-specified ontologies, we develop a key concept induction algorithm, which uses latent semantic analysis to identify key concepts and cluster documents. A corpus-related ontology generation algorithm is developed to generate the concept structures of documents. Based on two biomedical datasets, we evaluate the proposed method and five other clustering algorithms. The clustering results of the proposed method outperform the five other algorithms, in terms of key concept identification. With respect to the first biomedical dataset, our method has the F-measure values 0.7294 and 0.5294 based on the MeSH ontology and gene ontology (GO), respectively. With respect to the second biomedical dataset, our method has the F-measure values 0.6751 and 0.6746 based on the MeSH ontology and GO, respectively. Both results outperforms the five other algorithms in terms of F-measure. Based on the MeSH ontology and GO, the generated corpus-related ontologies show informative conceptual structures. The proposed method enables users to specify the domain knowledge to exploit the conceptual structures of biomedical document collections. In addition, the proposed method is able to extract the key concepts and cluster the documents with a relatively high precision. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Conceptions on pharmaceutical services in Brazilian primary health care

PubMed Central

Costa, Ediná Alves; Araújo, Patrícia Sodré; Penaforte, Thais Rodrigues; Barreto, Joslene Lacerda; Guerra, Augusto Afonso; Acurcio, Francisco de Assis; Guibu, Ione Aquemi; Alvares, Juliana; Costa, Karen Sarmento; Karnikowski, Margô Gomes de Oliveira; Soeiro, Orlando Mario; Leite, Silvana Nair

2017-01-01

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To identify and discuss the conceptions of pharmaceutical services in Brazilian Primary Health Care, according to different subjects. METHODS This study is part of the Pesquisa Nacional sobre Acesso, Utilização e Promoção do Uso Racional de Medicamentos – Serviços, 2015 (PNAUM – National Survey on Access, Use and Promotion of Rational Use of Medicines – Services, 2015), which is composed of an information survey in a representative sample of cities, stratified according to Brazilian regions, and a subsample of primary health care services. Municipal secretaries of health, those responsible for pharmaceutical services, and those responsible for medicine delivery in pharmacies/dispensing units of the selected services were interviewed. The questionnaires included one question about the understanding of the interviewee regarding pharmaceutical services. The content analysis technique was used to apprehend, in the statements, the meanings attributed to pharmaceutical services, which were subsequently classified into categories according to their main conceptions. RESULTS Among the wide diversity of conceptions on pharmaceutical services (PS), we highlight the ones focused on 1) logistic control of medicines with activities concerning guidance or information on their use and 2) guidance or information to users on the use of medicine. The findings reveal a shifting tendency from a medicine-focused conception to one that considers the users and their needs as the final recipient of these actions. However, the lack of references to conceptions regarding care management and integrality point out the slowness of this change; after all, this is a social and historical process that comprises the production of meanings that transcend legal, logistic, and technical arrangements in pharmaceutical services. CONCLUSIONS The diversity of conceptions expresses the several meanings attributed to pharmaceutical services; we also identified, in their reorientation process, a movement that reflects a gradual shift in the technical paradigm, from the focus on medicine logistics to a user-oriented approach of health services. PMID:29160453

Identifying biological concepts from a protein-related corpus with a probabilistic topic model

PubMed Central

Zheng, Bin; McLean, David C; Lu, Xinghua

2006-01-01

Background Biomedical literature, e.g., MEDLINE, contains a wealth of knowledge regarding functions of proteins. Major recurring biological concepts within such text corpora represent the domains of this body of knowledge. The goal of this research is to identify the major biological topics/concepts from a corpus of protein-related MEDLINE© titles and abstracts by applying a probabilistic topic model. Results The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model was applied to the corpus. Based on the Bayesian model selection, 300 major topics were extracted from the corpus. The majority of identified topics/concepts was found to be semantically coherent and most represented biological objects or concepts. The identified topics/concepts were further mapped to the controlled vocabulary of the Gene Ontology (GO) terms based on mutual information. Conclusion The major and recurring biological concepts within a collection of MEDLINE documents can be extracted by the LDA model. The identified topics/concepts provide parsimonious and semantically-enriched representation of the texts in a semantic space with reduced dimensionality and can be used to index text. PMID:16466569

Bringing the ecosystem services concept into marine management decisions, supporting ecosystems-based management.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tweddle, J. F.; Byg, A.; Davies, I.; Gubbins, M.; Irvine, K.; Kafas, A.; Kenter, J.; MacDonald, A.; Murray, R. B. O.; Potts, T.; Slater, A. M.; Wright, K.; Scott, B. E.

2016-02-01

The marine environment is under increasing use, putting pressure on marine ecosystems and increasing competition for space. New activities (e.g. renewable energy developments), evolving marine policies (e.g. implementation of marine protected areas), and climate change may drive changes in biodiversity and resulting ecosystem services (ES) that society and business utilise from coastal and marine systems. A process is needed that integrates ecological assessment of changes with stakeholder perceptions and valuation of ES, whilst balancing ease of application with the ability to deal with complex social-economic-ecological issues. The project "Cooperative participatory assessment of the impact of renewable technology on ecosystem services: CORPORATES" involved natural and social scientists, law and policy experts, and marine managers, with the aim of promoting more integrated decision making using ES concepts in marine management. CORPORATES developed a process to bring ES concepts into stakeholders' awareness. The interactive process, involving 2 workshops, employs interludes of knowledge exchange by experts on ecological processes underpinning ES and on law and policy. These enable mapping of benefits linked to activities, participatory system modelling, and deliberation of policy impacts on different sectors. The workshops were attended by industry representatives, regulatory/advisory partners, and other stakeholders (NGOs, SMEs, recreationalists, local government). Mixed sector groups produced new insights into links between activities and ES, and highlighted cross-sector concerns. Here we present the aspects of the process that successfully built shared understanding between industry and stakeholders of inter-linkages and interactions between ES, benefits, activities, and economic and cultural values. These methods provide an ES-based decision-support model for exchanging societal-ecological knowledge and providing stakeholder interaction in marine planning, supporting ecosystem-based management.

Bringing the ecosystem services concept into marine management decisions, supporting ecosystems-based management.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tweddle, J. F.; Byg, A.; Davies, I.; Gubbins, M.; Irvine, K.; Kafas, A.; Kenter, J.; MacDonald, A.; Murray, R. B. O.; Potts, T.; Slater, A. M.; Wright, K.; Scott, B. E.

2016-12-01

The marine environment is under increasing use, putting pressure on marine ecosystems and increasing competition for space. New activities (e.g. renewable energy developments), evolving marine policies (e.g. implementation of marine protected areas), and climate change may drive changes in biodiversity and resulting ecosystem services (ES) that society and business utilise from coastal and marine systems. A process is needed that integrates ecological assessment of changes with stakeholder perceptions and valuation of ES, whilst balancing ease of application with the ability to deal with complex social-economic-ecological issues. The project "Cooperative participatory assessment of the impact of renewable technology on ecosystem services: CORPORATES" involved natural and social scientists, law and policy experts, and marine managers, with the aim of promoting more integrated decision making using ES concepts in marine management. CORPORATES developed a process to bring ES concepts into stakeholders' awareness. The interactive process, involving 2 workshops, employs interludes of knowledge exchange by experts on ecological processes underpinning ES and on law and policy. These enable mapping of benefits linked to activities, participatory system modelling, and deliberation of policy impacts on different sectors. The workshops were attended by industry representatives, regulatory/advisory partners, and other stakeholders (NGOs, SMEs, recreationalists, local government). Mixed sector groups produced new insights into links between activities and ES, and highlighted cross-sector concerns. Here we present the aspects of the process that successfully built shared understanding between industry and stakeholders of inter-linkages and interactions between ES, benefits, activities, and economic and cultural values. These methods provide an ES-based decision-support model for exchanging societal-ecological knowledge and providing stakeholder interaction in marine planning, supporting ecosystem-based management.

Understanding processes that generate flash floods in the arid Judean Desert to the Dead Sea - a measurement network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hennig, Hanna; Rödiger, Tino; Laronne, Jonathan B.; Geyer, Stefan; Merz, Ralf

2016-04-01

Flash floods in (semi-) arid regions are fascinating in their suddenness and can be harmful for humans, infrastructure, industry and tourism. Generated within minutes, an early warning system is essential. A hydrological model is required to quantify flash floods. Current models to predict flash floods are often based on simplified concepts and/or on concepts which were developed for humid regions. To more closely relate such models to local conditions, processes within catchments where flash floods occur require consideration. In this study we present a monitoring approach to decipher different flash flood generating processes in the ephemeral Wadi Arugot on the western side of the Dead Sea. To understand rainfall input a dense rain gauge network was installed. Locations of rain gauges were chosen based on land use, slope and soil cover. The spatiotemporal variation of rain intensity will also be available from radar backscatter. Level pressure sensors located at the outlet of major tributaries have been deployed to analyze in which part of the catchment water is generated. To identify the importance of soil moisture preconditions, two cosmic ray sensors have been deployed. At the outlet of the Arugot water is sampled and level is monitored. To more accurately determine water discharge, water velocity is measured using portable radar velocimetry. A first analysis of flash flood processes will be presented following the FLEX-Topo concept .(Savenije, 2010), where each landscape type is represented using an individual hydrological model according to the processes within the three hydrological response units: plateau, desert and outlet. References: Savenije, H. H. G.: HESS Opinions "Topography driven conceptual modelling (FLEX-Topo)", Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 14, 2681-2692, doi:10.5194/hess-14-2681-2010, 2010.

Response of the Alliance 1 Proof-of-Concept Airplane Under Gust Loads

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Naser, A. S.; Pototzky, A. S.; Spain, C. V.

2001-01-01

This report presents the work performed by Lockheed Martin's Langley Program Office in support of NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program. The primary purpose of this work was to develop and demonstrate a gust analysis method which accounts for the span-wise variation of gust velocity. This is important because these unmanned aircraft having high aspect ratios and low wing loading are very flexible, and fly at low speeds. The main focus of the work was therefore to perform a two-dimensional Power Spectrum Density (PSD) analysis of the Alliance 1 Proof-of-Concept Unmanned Aircraft, As of this writing, none of the aircraft described in this report have been constructed. They are concepts represented by analytical models. The process first involved the development of suitable structural and aeroelastic Finite Element Models (FEM). This was followed by development of a one-dimensional PSD gust analysis, and then the two-dimensional (PSD) analysis of the Alliance 1. For further validation and comparison, two additional analyses were performed. A two-dimensional PSD gust analysis was performed on a simplet MSC/NASTRAN example problem. Finally a one-dimensional discrete gust analysis was performed on Alliance 1. This report describes this process, shows the relevant comparisons between analytical methods, and discusses the physical meanings of the results.

Rough Evaluation Structure: Application of Rough Set Theory to Generate Simple Rules for Inconsistent Preference Relation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gehrmann, Andreas; Nagai, Yoshimitsu; Yoshida, Osamu; Ishizu, Syohei

Since management decision-making becomes complex and preferences of the decision-maker frequently becomes inconsistent, multi-attribute decision-making problems were studied. To represent inconsistent preference relation, the concept of evaluation structure was introduced. We can generate simple rules to represent inconsistent preference relation by the evaluation structures. Further rough set theory for the preference relation was studied and the concept of approximation was introduced. One of our main aims of this paper is to introduce a concept of rough evaluation structure for representing inconsistent preference relation. We apply rough set theory to the evaluation structure, and develop a method for generating simple rules for inconsistent preference relations. In this paper, we introduce concepts of totally ordered information system, similarity class of preference relation, upper and lower approximation of preference relations. We also show the properties of rough evaluation structure and provide a simple example. As an application of rough evaluation structure, we analyze questionnaire survey of customer preferences about audio players.

Chemodiversity and molecular plasticity: recognition processes as explored by property spaces.

PubMed

Vistoli, Giulio; Pedretti, Alessandro; Testa, Bernard

2011-06-01

In the last few years, a need to account for molecular flexibility in drug-design methodologies has emerged, even if the dynamic behavior of molecular properties is seldom made explicit. For a flexible molecule, it is indeed possible to compute different values for a given conformation-dependent property and the ensemble of such values defines a property space that can be used to describe its molecular variability; a most representative case is the lipophilicity space. In this review, a number of applications of lipophilicity space and other property spaces are presented, showing that this concept can be fruitfully exploited: to investigate the constraints exerted by media of different levels of structural organization, to examine processes of molecular recognition and binding at an atomic level, to derive informative descriptors to be included in quantitative structure--activity relationships and to analyze protein simulations extracting the relevant information. Much molecular information is neglected in the descriptors used by medicinal chemists, while the concept of property space can fill this gap by accounting for the often-disregarded dynamic behavior of both small ligands and biomacromolecules. Property space also introduces some innovative concepts such as molecular sensitivity and plasticity, which appear best suited to explore the ability of a molecule to adapt itself to the environment variously modulating its property and conformational profiles. Globally, such concepts can enhance our understanding of biological phenomena providing fruitful descriptors in drug-design and pharmaceutical sciences.

Survey and Method for Determination of Trajectory Predictor Requirements

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rentas, Tamika L.; Green, Steven M.; Cate, Karen Tung

2009-01-01

A survey of air-traffic-management researchers, representing a broad range of automation applications, was conducted to document trajectory-predictor requirements for future decision-support systems. Results indicated that the researchers were unable to articulate a basic set of trajectory-prediction requirements for their automation concepts. Survey responses showed the need to establish a process to help developers determine the trajectory-predictor-performance requirements for their concepts. Two methods for determining trajectory-predictor requirements are introduced. A fast-time simulation method is discussed that captures the sensitivity of a concept to the performance of its trajectory-prediction capability. A characterization method is proposed to provide quicker, yet less precise results, based on analysis and simulation to characterize the trajectory-prediction errors associated with key modeling options for a specific concept. Concept developers can then identify the relative sizes of errors associated with key modeling options, and qualitatively determine which options lead to significant errors. The characterization method is demonstrated for a case study involving future airport surface traffic management automation. Of the top four sources of error, results indicated that the error associated with accelerations to and from turn speeds was unacceptable, the error associated with the turn path model was acceptable, and the error associated with taxi-speed estimation was of concern and needed a higher fidelity concept simulation to obtain a more precise result

Passage relevance models for genomics search.

PubMed

Urbain, Jay; Frieder, Ophir; Goharian, Nazli

2009-03-19

We present a passage relevance model for integrating syntactic and semantic evidence of biomedical concepts and topics using a probabilistic graphical model. Component models of topics, concepts, terms, and document are represented as potential functions within a Markov Random Field. The probability of a passage being relevant to a biologist's information need is represented as the joint distribution across all potential functions. Relevance model feedback of top ranked passages is used to improve distributional estimates of query concepts and topics in context, and a dimensional indexing strategy is used for efficient aggregation of concept and term statistics. By integrating multiple sources of evidence including dependencies between topics, concepts, and terms, we seek to improve genomics literature passage retrieval precision. Using this model, we are able to demonstrate statistically significant improvements in retrieval precision using a large genomics literature corpus.

Tail mean and related robust solution concepts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ogryczak, Włodzimierz

2014-01-01

Robust optimisation might be viewed as a multicriteria optimisation problem where objectives correspond to the scenarios although their probabilities are unknown or imprecise. The simplest robust solution concept represents a conservative approach focused on the worst-case scenario results optimisation. A softer concept allows one to optimise the tail mean thus combining performances under multiple worst scenarios. We show that while considering robust models allowing the probabilities to vary only within given intervals, the tail mean represents the robust solution for only upper bounded probabilities. For any arbitrary intervals of probabilities the corresponding robust solution may be expressed by the optimisation of appropriately combined mean and tail mean criteria thus remaining easily implementable with auxiliary linear inequalities. Moreover, we use the tail mean concept to develope linear programming implementable robust solution concepts related to risk averse optimisation criteria.

A brain-based account of “basic-level” concepts

PubMed Central

Bauer, Andrew James; Just, Marcel Adam

2017-01-01

This study provides a brain-based account of how object concepts at an intermediate (basic) level of specificity are represented, offering an enriched view of what it means for a concept to be a basic-level concept, a research topic pioneered by Rosch and others (Rosch et al., 1976). Applying machine learning techniques to fMRI data, it was possible to determine the semantic content encoded in the neural representations of object concepts at basic and subordinate levels of abstraction. The representation of basic-level concepts (e.g. bird) was spatially broad, encompassing sensorimotor brain areas that encode concrete object properties, and also language and heteromodal integrative areas that encode abstract semantic content. The representation of subordinate-level concepts (robin) was less widely distributed, concentrated in perceptual areas that underlie concrete content. Furthermore, basic-level concepts were representative of their subordinates in that they were neurally similar to their typical but not atypical subordinates (bird was neurally similar to robin but not woodpecker). The findings provide a brain-based account of the advantages that basic-level concepts enjoy in everyday life over subordinate-level concepts: the basic level is a broad topographical representation that encompasses both concrete and abstract semantic content, reflecting the multifaceted yet intuitive meaning of basic-level concepts. PMID:28826947

A brain-based account of "basic-level" concepts.

PubMed

Bauer, Andrew James; Just, Marcel Adam

2017-11-01

This study provides a brain-based account of how object concepts at an intermediate (basic) level of specificity are represented, offering an enriched view of what it means for a concept to be a basic-level concept, a research topic pioneered by Rosch and others (Rosch et al., 1976). Applying machine learning techniques to fMRI data, it was possible to determine the semantic content encoded in the neural representations of object concepts at basic and subordinate levels of abstraction. The representation of basic-level concepts (e.g. bird) was spatially broad, encompassing sensorimotor brain areas that encode concrete object properties, and also language and heteromodal integrative areas that encode abstract semantic content. The representation of subordinate-level concepts (robin) was less widely distributed, concentrated in perceptual areas that underlie concrete content. Furthermore, basic-level concepts were representative of their subordinates in that they were neurally similar to their typical but not atypical subordinates (bird was neurally similar to robin but not woodpecker). The findings provide a brain-based account of the advantages that basic-level concepts enjoy in everyday life over subordinate-level concepts: the basic level is a broad topographical representation that encompasses both concrete and abstract semantic content, reflecting the multifaceted yet intuitive meaning of basic-level concepts. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Two-Phase chief complaint mapping to the UMLS metathesaurus in Korean electronic medical records.

PubMed

Kang, Bo-Yeong; Kim, Dae-Won; Kim, Hong-Gee

2009-01-01

The task of automatically determining the concepts referred to in chief complaint (CC) data from electronic medical records (EMRs) is an essential component of many EMR applications aimed at biosurveillance for disease outbreaks. Previous approaches that have been used for this concept mapping have mainly relied on term-level matching, whereby the medical terms in the raw text and their synonyms are matched with concepts in a terminology database. These previous approaches, however, have shortcomings that limit their efficacy in CC concept mapping, where the concepts for CC data are often represented by associative terms rather than by synonyms. Therefore, herein we propose a concept mapping scheme based on a two-phase matching approach, especially for application to Korean CCs, which uses term-level complete matching in the first phase and concept-level matching based on concept learning in the second phase. The proposed concept-level matching suggests the method to learn all the terms (associative terms as well as synonyms) that represent the concept and predict the most probable concept for a CC based on the learned terms. Experiments on 1204 CCs extracted from 15,618 discharge summaries of Korean EMRs showed that the proposed method gave significantly improved F-measure values compared to the baseline system, with improvements of up to 73.57%.

Care ideologies reflected in 4 conceptions of pharmaceutical care.

PubMed

Björkman, Ingeborg K; Bernsten, Cecilia B; Sanner, Margareta A

2008-12-01

Different ways to practice pharmaceutical care have been developed. One expression of this fact is the existence of many different classification systems to document drug-related problems (DRPs). Evidence suggests that classification systems have different characteristics and that these characteristics reflect different conceptions of pharmaceutical care. To increase the understanding of conceptions of pharmaceutical care, underlying values and beliefs (ideologies) can be explored. To explore various conceptions of pharmaceutical care to identify the care ideologies on which these conceptions are based. Representatives of 4 selected conceptions of pharmaceutical care were interviewed in face-to-face meetings. During the interviews, 4 basic questions were asked. Three were focused on pharmaceutical care and 1 on DRPs. Interview transcripts were analyzed by an inductive method inspired by grounded theory. The conceptions studied were Strand, Granada-II, PCNE v5.0, and Apoteket. In Strand, patients are given a more active role in the pharmaceutical care process, as compared to Granada-II, PCNE v5.0, and Apoteket. Pharmacists in all the conceptions of pharmaceutical care assume they have special knowledge that patients benefit from. However, they use their knowledge in different ways in the various pharmaceutical care conceptions. In Strand, individual goals of drug therapy are established together with the patient, whereas in Granada-II, PCNE, and Apoteket goals are not explicitly discussed. The identified differences correspond to different care ideologies. The pharmaceutical care conceptions are based on different care ideologies. The ideology is expressed in how therapy goals are set and patient needs defined. Strand is based on a patient-centered ideology; patient therapy goals and needs are defined by the patient together with the practitioners. Granada-II, PCNE, and Apoteket are based on an evidence-based medicine approach; patient therapy goals and needs are defined by the practitioners, based on available scientific knowledge.

Grounded understanding of abstract concepts: The case of STEM learning.

PubMed

Hayes, Justin C; Kraemer, David J M

2017-01-01

Characterizing the neural implementation of abstract conceptual representations has long been a contentious topic in cognitive science. At the heart of the debate is whether the "sensorimotor" machinery of the brain plays a central role in representing concepts, or whether the involvement of these perceptual and motor regions is merely peripheral or epiphenomenal. The domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning provides an important proving ground for sensorimotor (or grounded) theories of cognition, as concepts in science and engineering courses are often taught through laboratory-based and other hands-on methodologies. In this review of the literature, we examine evidence suggesting that sensorimotor processes strengthen learning associated with the abstract concepts central to STEM pedagogy. After considering how contemporary theories have defined abstraction in the context of semantic knowledge, we propose our own explanation for how body-centered information, as computed in sensorimotor brain regions and visuomotor association cortex, can form a useful foundation upon which to build an understanding of abstract scientific concepts, such as mechanical force. Drawing from theories in cognitive neuroscience, we then explore models elucidating the neural mechanisms involved in grounding intangible concepts, including Hebbian learning, predictive coding, and neuronal recycling. Empirical data on STEM learning through hands-on instruction are considered in light of these neural models. We conclude the review by proposing three distinct ways in which the field of cognitive neuroscience can contribute to STEM learning by bolstering our understanding of how the brain instantiates abstract concepts in an embodied fashion.

Benchmarking initiatives in the water industry.

PubMed

Parena, R; Smeets, E

2001-01-01

Customer satisfaction and service care are every day pushing professionals in the water industry to seek to improve their performance, lowering costs and increasing the provided service level. Process Benchmarking is generally recognised as a systematic mechanism of comparing one's own utility with other utilities or businesses with the intent of self-improvement by adopting structures or methods used elsewhere. The IWA Task Force on Benchmarking, operating inside the Statistics and Economics Committee, has been committed to developing a general accepted concept of Process Benchmarking to support water decision-makers in addressing issues of efficiency. In a first step the Task Force disseminated among the Committee members a questionnaire focused on providing suggestions about the kind, the evolution degree and the main concepts of Benchmarking adopted in the represented Countries. A comparison among the guidelines adopted in The Netherlands and Scandinavia has recently challenged the Task Force in drafting a methodology for a worldwide process benchmarking in water industry. The paper provides a framework of the most interesting benchmarking experiences in the water sector and describes in detail both the final results of the survey and the methodology focused on identification of possible improvement areas.

Wireless structural monitoring for homeland security applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kiremidjian, Garo K.; Kiremidjian, Anne S.; Lynch, Jerome P.

2004-07-01

This paper addresses the development of a robust, low-cost, low power, and high performance autonomous wireless monitoring system for civil assets such as large facilities, new construction, bridges, dams, commercial buildings, etc. The role of the system is to identify the onset, development, location and severity of structural vulnerability and damage. The proposed system represents an enabling infrastructure for addressing structural vulnerabilities specifically associated with homeland security. The system concept is based on dense networks of "intelligent" wireless sensing units. The fundamental properties of a wireless sensing unit include: (a) interfaces to multiple sensors for measuring structural and environmental data (such as acceleration, displacements, pressure, strain, material degradation, temperature, gas agents, biological agents, humidity, corrosion, etc.); (b) processing of sensor data with embedded algorithms for assessing damage and environmental conditions; (c) peer-to-peer wireless communications for information exchange among units(thus enabling joint "intelligent" processing coordination) and storage of data and processed information in servers for information fusion; (d) ultra low power operation; (e) cost-effectiveness and compact size through the use of low-cost small-size off-the-shelf components. An integral component of the overall system concept is a decision support environment for interpretation and dissemination of information to various decision makers.

Integrated operation of continuous chromatography and biotransformations for the generic high yield production of fine chemicals.

PubMed

Bechtold, Matthias; Makart, Stefan; Heinemann, Matthias; Panke, Sven

2006-06-25

The rapid progress in biocatalysis in the identification and development of enzymes over the last decade has enormously enlarged the chemical reaction space that can be addressed not only in research applications, but also on industrial scale. This enables us to consider even those groups of reactions that are very promising from a synthetic point of view, but suffer from drawbacks on process level, such as an unfavourable position of the reaction equilibrium. Prominent examples stem from the aldolase-catalyzed enantioselective carbon-carbon bond forming reactions, reactions catalyzed by isomerising enzymes, and reactions that are kinetically controlled. On the other hand, continuous chromatography concepts such as the simulating moving bed technology have matured and are increasingly realized on industrial scale for the efficient separation of difficult compound mixtures - including enantiomers - with unprecedented efficiency. We propose that coupling of enzyme reactor and continuous chromatography is a very suitable and potentially generic process concept to address the thermodynamic limitations of a host of promising biotransformations. This way, it should be possible to establish novel in situ product recovery processes of unprecedented efficiency and selectivity that represent a feasible way to recruit novel biocatalysts to the industrial portfolio.

Off-target model based OPC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lu, Mark; Liang, Curtis; King, Dion; Melvin, Lawrence S., III

2005-11-01

Model-based Optical Proximity correction has become an indispensable tool for achieving wafer pattern to design fidelity at current manufacturing process nodes. Most model-based OPC is performed considering the nominal process condition, with limited consideration of through process manufacturing robustness. This study examines the use of off-target process models - models that represent non-nominal process states such as would occur with a dose or focus variation - to understands and manipulate the final pattern correction to a more process robust configuration. The study will first examine and validate the process of generating an off-target model, then examine the quality of the off-target model. Once the off-target model is proven, it will be used to demonstrate methods of generating process robust corrections. The concepts are demonstrated using a 0.13 μm logic gate process. Preliminary indications show success in both off-target model production and process robust corrections. With these off-target models as tools, mask production cycle times can be reduced.

Disability intervention model for older adults with arthritis: an integration of theory of symptom management and disablement process model.

PubMed

Shin, So Young

2014-12-01

To evolve a management plan for rheumatoid arthritis, it is necessary to understand the patient's symptom experience and disablement process. This paper aims to introduce and critique two models as a conceptual foundation from which to construct a new model for arthritis care. A Disability Intervention Model for Older Adults with Arthritis includes three interrelated concepts of symptom experience, symptom management strategies, and symptom outcomes that correspond to the Theory of Symptom Management. These main concepts influence or are influenced by contextual factors that are situated within the domains of person, environment, and health/illness. It accepts the bidirectional, complex, dynamic interactions among all components within the model representing the comprehensive aspects of the disablement process and its interventions in older adults with rheumatoid arthritis. In spite of some limitations such as confusion or complexity within the model, the Disability Intervention Model for Older Adults with Arthritis has strengths in that it encompasses the majority of the concepts of the two models, attempts to compensate for the limitations of the two models, and aims to understand the impact of rheumatoid arthritis on a patient's physical, cognitive, and emotional health status, socioeconomic status, and well-being. Therefore, it can be utilized as a guiding theoretical framework for arthritis care and research to improve the functional status of older adults with rheumatoid arthritis. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Conceptual design and multidisciplinary optimization of in-plane morphing wing structures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Inoyama, Daisaku; Sanders, Brian P.; Joo, James J.

2006-03-01

In this paper, the topology optimization methodology for the synthesis of distributed actuation system with specific applications to the morphing air vehicle is discussed. The main emphasis is placed on the topology optimization problem formulations and the development of computational modeling concepts. For demonstration purposes, the inplane morphing wing model is presented. The analysis model is developed to meet several important criteria: It must allow large rigid-body displacements, as well as variation in planform area, with minimum strain on structural members while retaining acceptable numerical stability for finite element analysis. Preliminary work has indicated that addressed modeling concept meets the criteria and may be suitable for the purpose. Topology optimization is performed on the ground structure based on this modeling concept with design variables that control the system configuration. In other words, states of each element in the model are design variables and they are to be determined through optimization process. In effect, the optimization process assigns morphing members as 'soft' elements, non-morphing load-bearing members as 'stiff' elements, and non-existent members as 'voids.' In addition, the optimization process determines the location and relative force intensities of distributed actuators, which is represented computationally as equal and opposite nodal forces with soft axial stiffness. Several different optimization problem formulations are investigated to understand their potential benefits in solution quality, as well as meaningfulness of formulation itself. Sample in-plane morphing problems are solved to demonstrate the potential capability of the methodology introduced in this paper.

Design flood estimation in ungauged basins: probabilistic extension of the design-storm concept

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berk, Mario; Špačková, Olga; Straub, Daniel

2016-04-01

Design flood estimation in ungauged basins is an important hydrological task, which is in engineering practice typically solved with the design storm concept. However, neglecting the uncertainty in the hydrological response of the catchment through the assumption of average-recurrence-interval (ARI) neutrality between rainfall and runoff can lead to flawed design flood estimates. Additionally, selecting a single critical rainfall duration neglects the contribution of other rainfall durations on the probability of extreme flood events. In this study, the design flood problem is approached with concepts from structural reliability that enable a consistent treatment of multiple uncertainties in estimating the design flood. The uncertainty of key model parameters are represented probabilistically and the First-Order Reliability Method (FORM) is used to compute the flood exceedance probability. As an important by-product, the FORM analysis provides the most likely parameter combination to lead to a flood with a certain exceedance probability; i.e. it enables one to find representative scenarios for e.g., a 100 year or a 1000 year flood. Possible different rainfall durations are incorporated by formulating the event of a given design flood as a series system. The method is directly applicable in practice, since for the description of the rainfall depth-duration characteristics, the same inputs as for the classical design storm methods are needed, which are commonly provided by meteorological services. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study of Trauchgauer Ach catchment in Bavaria, SCS Curve Number (CN) and Unit hydrograph models are used for modeling the hydrological process. The results indicate, in accordance with past experience, that the traditional design storm concept underestimates design floods.

Development of the Representation of Space in Normal Children: The Drawing of a Village.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miljkovitch, M.

The purpose of this study is to show that there is a gradual and measurable development in the drawing of space representation concepts. A further purpose is to show that children's drawings of a village (which represent relations among concepts) may be a better measure of their conceptual maturity than their drawings of a man (which represent a…

Analysing the Correlation between Social Network Analysis Measures and Performance of Students in Social Network-Based Engineering Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Putnik, Goran; Costa, Eric; Alves, Cátia; Castro, Hélio; Varela, Leonilde; Shah, Vaibhav

2016-01-01

Social network-based engineering education (SNEE) is designed and implemented as a model of Education 3.0 paradigm. SNEE represents a new learning methodology, which is based on the concept of social networks and represents an extended model of project-led education. The concept of social networks was applied in the real-life experiment,…

Analysis of chemical concepts as the basic of virtual laboratory development and process science skills in solubility and solubility product subject

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Syafrina, R.; Rohman, I.; Yuliani, G.

2018-05-01

This study aims to analyze the concept characteristics of solubility and solubility products that will serve as the basis for the development of virtual laboratory and students' science process skills. Characteristics of the analyzed concepts include concept definitions, concept attributes, and types of concepts. The concept analysis method uses concept analysis according to Herron. The results of the concept analysis show that there are twelve chemical concepts that become the prerequisite concept before studying the solubility and solubility and five core concepts that students must understand in the solubility and Solubility product. As many as 58.3% of the definitions of the concepts contained in high school textbooks support students' science process skills, the rest of the definition of the concept is memorized. Concept attributes that meet three levels of chemical representation and can be poured into a virtual laboratory have a percentage of 66.6%. Type of concept, 83.3% is a concept based on principle; and 16.6% concepts that state the process. Meanwhile, the science process skills that can be developed based on concept analysis are the ability to observe, calculate, measure, predict, interpret, hypothesize, apply, classify, and inference.

Enriching Student Concept Images: Teaching and Learning Fractions through a Multiple-Embodiment Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Xiaofen; Clements, M. A.; Ellerton, Nerida F.

2015-01-01

This study investigated how fifth-grade children's concept images of the unit fractions represented by the symbols 1/2, 1/3/ and 1/4 changed as a result of their participation in an instructional intervention based on multiple embodiments of fraction concepts. The participants' concept images were examined through pre- and post-teaching written…

Resilience: synthesis of concept analyses and contribution to nursing classifications.

PubMed

Caldeira, S; Timmins, F

2016-06-01

To synthetize elements of research on concept analyses of resilience; and to propose a definition of resilience to NANDA International (NANDA-I) and International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP(®) ). Nursing classifications represent nursing knowledge that is clinically relevant and in continuous development. Nursing is considered holistic and there is always the need to consider human responses to health and life processes. Continuously there are new and emerging concepts concerning humans and health that should be considered within the organization and delivery of health care as resilience. In March 2015, the authors performed a synthesis of the findings of research concept analysis research derived from a systematic literature search of electronic databases (PsycINFO, CINAHL and PubMed). Search terms used in the title were: 'resilience' AND 'analysis' AND 'concept'. Papers written in Portuguese or English were included. A total of 27 papers were identified and eight papers were included. Of these, seven papers used Walker & Avant's () model and one used Rodger's () model. Resilience emerged as a fundamental concept across the lifespan that is closely related to health and well-being. Resilience is a phenomenon of interest for nurses. Similar attributes, antecedents, consequents and definitions were synthesized into a new proposal of a definition of resilience. While some diagnoses related to resilience are classified in NANDA-I, the concept is not included in ICNP(®) . The inclusion of the concept into ICNP(®) and the update in NANDA-I is a contribution for nursing knowledge through education and for clinical practice, as this could promote the effectiveness of interventions in several contexts. © 2016 International Council of Nurses.

Subliminal processes, dissociation and the 'I'.

PubMed

Bob, Petr

2003-06-01

The study of unconscious processes leads to the hypothesis of the limit of consciousness, which involves two main kinds of psychic activity. The first represents psychic contents which are subliminal for their low energy, the second subliminal contents which are inaccessible to consciousness because they are dissociated in the subliminal region. Dissociation is a concept introduced by Pierre Janet for splitting consciousness due to traumatic events or during hypnosis. It takes a more general form in Hilgard's neo-dissociation theory of hypnotic phenomena and also in Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. Further generalization links it to the modern findings of explicit and implicit perception, leading to a shift in dissociation from hypothesis to clinical, experimental and theoretical reality. Studies in hypnosis also point to the existence of an integrative psychic entity, that comprises the conscious 'I'. Hilgard called this the hidden observer, and his findings represent empirical confirmation of Jung's term for the Self as mirror 'I', which leads to many important consequences for self-discovery and the meaning of life.

Manifold decoding for neural representations of face viewpoint and gaze direction using magnetoencephalographic data.

PubMed

Kuo, Po-Chih; Chen, Yong-Sheng; Chen, Li-Fen

2018-05-01

The main challenge in decoding neural representations lies in linking neural activity to representational content or abstract concepts. The transformation from a neural-based to a low-dimensional representation may hold the key to encoding perceptual processes in the human brain. In this study, we developed a novel model by which to represent two changeable features of faces: face viewpoint and gaze direction. These features are embedded in spatiotemporal brain activity derived from magnetoencephalographic data. Our decoding results demonstrate that face viewpoint and gaze direction can be represented by manifold structures constructed from brain responses in the bilateral occipital face area and right superior temporal sulcus, respectively. Our results also show that the superposition of brain activity in the manifold space reveals the viewpoints of faces as well as directions of gazes as perceived by the subject. The proposed manifold representation model provides a novel opportunity to gain further insight into the processing of information in the human brain. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Neighborhood Auditing Tool: a hybrid interface for auditing the UMLS.

PubMed

Morrey, C Paul; Geller, James; Halper, Michael; Perl, Yehoshua

2009-06-01

The UMLS's integration of more than 100 source vocabularies, not necessarily consistent with one another, causes some inconsistencies. The purpose of auditing the UMLS is to detect such inconsistencies and to suggest how to resolve them while observing the requirement of fully representing the content of each source in the UMLS. A software tool, called the Neighborhood Auditing Tool (NAT), that facilitates UMLS auditing is presented. The NAT supports "neighborhood-based" auditing, where, at any given time, an auditor concentrates on a single-focus concept and one of a variety of neighborhoods of its closely related concepts. Typical diagrammatic displays of concept networks have a number of shortcomings, so the NAT utilizes a hybrid diagram/text interface that features stylized neighborhood views which retain some of the best features of both the diagrammatic layouts and text windows while avoiding the shortcomings. The NAT allows an auditor to display knowledge from both the Metathesaurus (concept) level and the Semantic Network (semantic type) level. Various additional features of the NAT that support the auditing process are described. The usefulness of the NAT is demonstrated through a group of case studies. Its impact is tested with a study involving a select group of auditors.

Quantum structure of negation and conjunction in human thought

PubMed Central

Aerts, Diederik; Sozzo, Sandro; Veloz, Tomas

2015-01-01

We analyze in this paper the data collected in a set of experiments investigating how people combine natural concepts. We study the mutual influence of conceptual conjunction and negation by measuring the membership weights of a list of exemplars with respect to two concepts, e.g., Fruits and Vegetables, and their conjunction Fruits And Vegetables, but also their conjunction when one or both concepts are negated, namely, Fruits And Not Vegetables, Not Fruits And Vegetables, and Not Fruits And Not Vegetables. Our findings sharpen and advance existing analysis on conceptual combinations, revealing systematic deviations from classical (fuzzy set) logic and probability theory. And, more important, our results give further considerable evidence to the validity of our quantum-theoretic framework for the combination of two concepts. Indeed, the representation of conceptual negation naturally arises from the general assumptions of our two-sector Fock space model, and this representation faithfully agrees with the collected data. In addition, we find a new significant and a priori unexpected deviation from classicality, which can exactly be explained by assuming that human reasoning is the superposition of an “emergent reasoning” and a “logical reasoning,” and that these two processes are represented in a Fock space algebraic structure. PMID:26483715

Conceptual Design and Dynamics Testing and Modeling of a Mars Tumbleweed Rover

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Calhoun Philip C.; Harris, Steven B.; Raiszadeh, Behzad; Zaleski, Kristina D.

2005-01-01

The NASA Langley Research Center has been developing a novel concept for a Mars planetary rover called the Mars Tumbleweed. This concept utilizes the wind to propel the rover along the Mars surface, bringing it the potential to cover vast distances not possible with current Mars rover technology. This vehicle, in its deployed configuration, must be large and lightweight to provide the ratio of drag force to rolling resistance necessary to initiate motion from rest on the Mars surface. One Tumbleweed design concept that satisfies these considerations is called the Eggbeater-Dandelion. This paper describes the basic design considerations and a proposed dynamics model of the concept for use in simulation studies. It includes a summary of rolling/bouncing dynamics tests that used videogrammetry to better understand, characterize, and validate the dynamics model assumptions, especially the effective rolling resistance in bouncing/rolling dynamic conditions. The dynamics test used cameras to capture the motion of 32 targets affixed to a test article s outer structure. Proper placement of the cameras and alignment of their respective fields of view provided adequate image resolution of multiple targets along the trajectory as the test article proceeded down the ramp. Image processing of the frames from multiple cameras was used to determine the target positions. Position data from a set of these test runs was compared with results of a three dimensional, flexible dynamics model. Model input parameters were adjusted to match the test data for runs conducted. This process presented herein provided the means to characterize the dynamics and validate the simulation of the Eggbeater-Dandelion concept. The simulation model was used to demonstrate full scale Tumbleweed motion from a stationary condition on a flat-sloped terrain using representative Mars environment parameters.

Validation Of The Airspace Concept Evaluation System Using Real World Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zelinski, Shannon

2005-01-01

This paper discusses the process of performing a validation of the Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES) using real world historical flight operational data. ACES inputs are generated from select real world data and processed to create a realistic reproduction of a single day of operations within the National Airspace System (NAS). ACES outputs are then compared to real world operational metrics and delay statistics for the reproduced day. Preliminary results indicate that ACES produces delays and airport operational metrics similar to the real world with minor variations of delay by phase of flight. ACES is a nation-wide fast-time simulation tool developed at NASA Ames Research Center. ACES models and simulates the NAS using interacting agents representing center control, terminal flow management, airports, individual flights, and other NAS elements. These agents pass messages between one another similar to real world communications. This distributed agent based system is designed to emulate the highly unpredictable nature of the NAS, making it a suitable tool to evaluate current and envisioned airspace concepts. To ensure that ACES produces the most realistic results, the system must be validated. There is no way to validate future concepts scenarios using real world historical data, but current day scenario validations increase confidence in the validity of future scenario results. Each operational day has unique weather and traffic demand schedules. The more a simulation utilizes the unique characteristic of a specific day, the more realistic the results should be. ACES is able to simulate the full scale demand traffic necessary to perform a validation using real world data. Through direct comparison with the real world, models may continuee to be improved and unusual trends and biases may be filtered out of the system or used to normalize the results of future concept simulations.

A combined ANP-delphi approach to evaluate sustainable tourism

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Garcia-Melon, Monica, E-mail: mgarciam@dpi.upv.es; Gomez-Navarro, Tomas, E-mail: tgomez@dpi.upv.es; Acuna-Dutra, Silvia, E-mail: sacuna@unime.edu.ve

The evaluation of sustainable tourism strategies promoted by National Parks (NP) related stakeholders is a key concern for NP managers. To help them in their strategic evaluation procedures, in this paper we propose a methodology based on the Analytic Network Process and a Delphi-type judgment-ensuring procedure. The approach aims at involving stakeholders in a participatory and consensus-building process. The methodology was applied to Los Roques NP in Venezuela. The problem included three sustainable tourism strategies defined by the stakeholders: eco-efficient resorts, eco-friendly leisure activities and ecological transportation systems. Representatives of eight stakeholders participated in the methodology. 13 sustainability criteria weremore » selected. Results provide some important insights into the overall philosophy and underlying participants' conception of what sustainable development of Los Roques NP means. This conception is broadly shared by stakeholders as they coincided in the weights of most of the criteria, which were assigned individually through the questionnaire. It is particularly noteworthy that tourists and environmentalists almost fully match in their assessments of criteria but not of the alternatives. Moreover, there is a great agreement in the final assessment. This suggests that the regular contact among the different stakeholders, i.e. tourists with inhabitants, authorities with environmentalists, tour operators with representatives of the ministry, etc. has led to a common understanding of the opportunities and threats for the NP. They all agreed that the procedure enhances participation and transparency and it is a necessary source of information and support for their decisions.« less

The Multi-Isotope Process (MIP) Monitor Project: FY13 Final Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Meier, David E.; Coble, Jamie B.; Jordan, David V.

The Multi-Isotope Process (MIP) Monitor provides an efficient approach to monitoring the process conditions in reprocessing facilities in support of the goal of “… (minimization of) the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.” The MIP Monitor measures the distribution of the radioactive isotopes in product and waste streams of a nuclear reprocessing facility. These isotopes are monitored online by gamma spectrometry and compared, in near-real-time, to spectral patterns representing “normal” process conditions using multivariate analysis and pattern recognition algorithms. The combination of multivariate analysis and gamma spectroscopy allows us to detect small changes in the gamma spectrum, which may indicatemore » changes in process conditions. By targeting multiple gamma-emitting indicator isotopes, the MIP Monitor approach is compatible with the use of small, portable, relatively high-resolution gamma detectors that may be easily deployed throughout an existing facility. The automated multivariate analysis can provide a level of data obscurity, giving a built-in information barrier to protect sensitive or proprietary operational data. Proof-of-concept simulations and experiments have been performed in previous years to demonstrate the validity of this tool in a laboratory setting for systems representing aqueous reprocessing facilities. However, pyroprocessing is emerging as an alternative to aqueous reprocessing techniques.« less

Biphoton optics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Strekalov, Dmitry Vladimirovich

1997-10-01

The subject of this dissertation is the study of the two- photon entanglement. This phenomenon has been paid a great deal of attention since 1935, when A. Einstein, B. Podolsky and N. Rosen asked their famous question, 'Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?' An entangled system behavior is inconsistent with many classical concepts. Therefore, the understanding of two-photon entanglement is important for the foundations of quantum theory. A two-photon entangled sate represents a two-photon, or a biphoton, rather than two photons. The concept of biphoton as a single nonlocal quantum object is fundamentally different from the concept of a photon pair, as has been experimentally demonstrated in the present dissertation. Two-photon entanglement gives rise to unusual 'ghost' interference and diffraction, nonlocal geometrical phase, and other quantum phenomena originally studied in the present dissertation. The variety of available results calls for bringing them into a general system which we call Biphoton Optics. This is the main goal of this dissertation. Biphoton optics operate with two-photon wave packets, or with an equivalent concept of advanced wave. We show that in the framework of the advanced wave concept two-photon phenomena can be effectively described in terms of classical optics. Therefore the biphoton optics has the same structure as the classical optics. It includes two- photon geometrical optics, dispersion and frequency beating, polarization effects, interference, diffraction, and geometrical phase. All these two-photon effects are represented by experiments included in this dissertation. Our approach does not make two-photon quantum effects 'classical', however. It should be understood that the advanced wave model operates with counter-propagation in time which does not correspond to any real physical process. Therefore it is just a model, but it is clearly a great advantage to have such a model that is both simple and powerful, in terms of its ability to describe the known results and accurately predict the new ones. Therefore an important step is made in understanding and describing of the quantum phenomena of two-photon entanglement.

Convection-Diffusion Layer in an "Open Space" for Local Surface Treatment and Microfabrication using a Four-Aperture Microchemical Pen.

PubMed

Mao, Sifeng; Zhang, Yong; Zhang, Weifei; Zeng, Hulie; Nakajima, Hizuru; Lin, Jin-Ming; Uchiyama, Katsumi

2017-09-06

A four-aperture microchemical pen was used to produce a stable convection-diffusion layer in an "open space" for microreactions and microfabrication. The process represents a new method for microreactions and microfabrication in a convection-diffusion layer. To prove the concept of a convection-diffusion layer in an "open space", bovine serum albumin was labeled with 4-fluoro-7-nitro-2,1,3-benzoxadiazole to confirm that the small convection-diffusion layer was effective for local surface treatment. To demonstrate the potential for microfabrication, silver patterns were fabricated on a glass surface with a convection-diffusion layer by using the silver-mirror reaction. The widths of each silver pattern could be easily controlled from 10 to 60 μm. Patterned silver lines with uniform widths or gradient widths were prepared. This is the first proof of concept study of a convection-diffusion layer in an "open space" used in local surface treatment and microfabrication on a surface. The microchemical pen represents a potential method for the region-selective microtreatment of tissues, cells, and other biological interfaces. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Conceptual short term memory in perception and thought.

PubMed

Potter, Mary C

2012-01-01

Conceptual short term memory (CSTM) is a theoretical construct that provides one answer to the question of how perceptual and conceptual processes are related. CSTM is a mental buffer and processor in which current perceptual stimuli and their associated concepts from long term memory (LTM) are represented briefly, allowing meaningful patterns or structures to be identified (Potter, 1993, 1999, 2009). CSTM is different from and complementary to other proposed forms of working memory: it is engaged extremely rapidly, has a large but ill-defined capacity, is largely unconscious, and is the basis for the unreflective understanding that is characteristic of everyday experience. The key idea behind CSTM is that most cognitive processing occurs without review or rehearsal of material in standard working memory and with little or no conscious reasoning. When one perceives a meaningful stimulus such as a word, picture, or object, it is rapidly identified at a conceptual level and in turn activates associated information from LTM. New links among concurrently active concepts are formed in CSTM, shaped by parsing mechanisms of language or grouping principles in scene perception and by higher-level knowledge and current goals. The resulting structure represents the gist of a picture or the meaning of a sentence, and it is this structure that we are conscious of and that can be maintained in standard working memory and consolidated into LTM. Momentarily activated information that is not incorporated into such structures either never becomes conscious or is rapidly forgotten. This whole cycle - identification of perceptual stimuli, memory recruitment, structuring, consolidation in LTM, and forgetting of non-structured material - may occur in less than 1 s when viewing a pictured scene or reading a sentence. The evidence for such a process is reviewed and its implications for the relation of perception and cognition are discussed.

Accelerating the commercialization of university technologies for military healthcare applications: the role of the proof of concept process

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ochoa, Rosibel; DeLong, Hal; Kenyon, Jessica; Wilson, Eli

2011-06-01

The von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at UC San Diego (vonliebig.ucsd.edu) is focused on accelerating technology transfer and commercialization through programs and education on entrepreneurism. Technology Acceleration Projects (TAPs) that offer pre-venture grants and extensive mentoring on technology commercialization are a key component of its model which has been developed over the past ten years with the support of a grant from the von Liebig Foundation. In 2010, the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center partnered with the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), to develop a regional model of Technology Acceleration Program initially focused on military research to be deployed across the nation to increase awareness of military medical needs and to accelerate the commercialization of novel technologies to treat the patient. Participants to these challenges are multi-disciplinary teams of graduate students and faculty in engineering, medicine and business representing universities and research institutes in a region, selected via a competitive process, who receive commercialization assistance and funding grants to support translation of their research discoveries into products or services. To validate this model, a pilot program focused on commercialization of wireless healthcare technologies targeting campuses in Southern California has been conducted with the additional support of Qualcomm, Inc. Three projects representing three different universities in Southern California were selected out of forty five applications from ten different universities and research institutes. Over the next twelve months, these teams will conduct proof of concept studies, technology development and preliminary market research to determine the commercial feasibility of their technologies. This first regional program will help build the needed tools and processes to adapt and replicate this model across other regions in the Country.

A novel microdialysis-dissolution/permeation system for testing oral dosage forms: A proof-of-concept study.

PubMed

Fong, Sophia Yui Kau; Poulsen, Jessie; Brandl, Martin; Bauer-Brandl, Annette

2017-01-01

A novel microdialysis-dissolution/permeation (M-D/P) system was developed for the biopharmaceutical assessment of oral drug formulations. This system consists of a side-by-side diffusion chamber, a microdialysis unit fixed within the dissolution chamber for continuous sampling, and a biomimetic Permeapad® as the intestinal barrier. In the M-D/P system, the concentration of the molecularly dissolved drug (with MWCO <20kDa) was measured over time in the dissolution compartment (representing the gastrointestinal tract) while the concentration of the permeated drug was measured in the acceptor compartment (representing the blood). The kinetics of both the dissolution process and the permeation process were simultaneously quantified under circumstances that mimic physiological conditions. For the current proof-of-concept study, hydrocortisone (HCS) in the form of slowly dissolving solvate crystals and buffer and the biorelevant fasted state simulated intestinal fluids (FaSSIF), were employed as the model drug and dissolution media, respectively. The applicability of the M-D/P system to dissolution and permeation profiling of HCS in buffer and in FaSSIF has been successfully demonstrated. Compared to the conventional direct sampling method (using filter of 0.1-0.45μm), sampling by the M-D/P system exhibited distinct advantages, including (1) showing minimal disturbance of the permeation process, (2) differentiating "molecularly" dissolved drugs from "apparently" dissolved drugs during dissolution of HCS in FaSSIF, and (3) being less laborious and having better sampling temporal resolution. M-D/P system appeared to be a promising, simple and routine tool that allows for the researchers' intensive comprehension of the interplay of dissolution and permeation thus helping for better oral formulation screening and as an ultimate goal, for better dosage forms assessment. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Case study: Lockheed-Georgia Company integrated design process

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Waldrop, C. T.

1980-01-01

A case study of the development of an Integrated Design Process is presented. The approach taken in preparing for the development of an integrated design process includes some of the IPAD approaches such as developing a Design Process Model, cataloging Technical Program Elements (TPE's), and examining data characteristics and interfaces between contiguous TPE's. The implementation plan is based on an incremental development of capabilities over a period of time with each step directed toward, and consistent with, the final architecture of a total integrated system. Because of time schedules and different computer hardware, this system will not be the same as the final IPAD release; however, many IPAD concepts will no doubt prove applicable as the best approach. Full advantage will be taken of the IPAD development experience. A scenario that could be typical for many companies, even outside the aerospace industry, in developing an integrated design process for an IPAD-type environment is represented.

Barrel organ of plate tectonics - a new tool for outreach and education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Broz, Petr; Machek, Matěj; Šorm, Zdar

2016-04-01

Plate tectonics is the major geological concept to explain dynamics and structure of Earth's outer shell, the lithosphere. In the plate tectonic theory processes in the Earth lithosphere and its dynamics is driven by the relative motion and interaction of lithospheric plates. Geologically most active regions on Earth often correlate with the lithospheric plate boundaries. Thus for explaining the earth surface evolution, mountain building, volcanism and earthquake origin it is important to understand processes at the plate boundaries. However these processes associated with plate tectonics usually require significant period of time to take effects, therefore, their entire cycles cannot be directly observed in the nature by humans. This makes a challenge for scientists studying these processes, but also for teachers and popularizers trying to explain them to students and to the general public. Therefore, to overcome this problem, we developed a mechanical model of plate tectonics enabling demonstration of most important processes associated with plate tectonics in real time. The mechanical model is a wooden box, more specifically a special type of barrel organ, with hand painted backdrops in the front side. These backdrops are divided into several components representing geodynamic processes associated with plate tectonics, specifically convective currents occurring in the mantle, sea-floor spreading, a subduction of the oceanic crust under the continental crust, partial melting and volcanism associated with subduction, a formation of magmatic stripes, an ascent of mantle plume throughout the mantle, a volcanic activity associated with hot spots, and a formation and degradation of volcanic islands on moving lithospheric plate. All components are set in motion by a handle controlled by a human operator, and the scene is illuminated with colored lights controlled automatically by an electric device embedded in the box. Operation of the model may be seen on www.geologyinexperiments.com where additional pictures and details about the construction are available. This mechanical model represents a unique outreach tool how to present processes, normally taking eons to occur, to students and to the public in easy and funny way, and how to attract their attention to the most important concept in geology.

Characteristic time scales for diffusion processes through layers and across interfaces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carr, Elliot J.

2018-04-01

This paper presents a simple tool for characterizing the time scale for continuum diffusion processes through layered heterogeneous media. This mathematical problem is motivated by several practical applications such as heat transport in composite materials, flow in layered aquifers, and drug diffusion through the layers of the skin. In such processes, the physical properties of the medium vary across layers and internal boundary conditions apply at the interfaces between adjacent layers. To characterize the time scale, we use the concept of mean action time, which provides the mean time scale at each position in the medium by utilizing the fact that the transition of the transient solution of the underlying partial differential equation model, from initial state to steady state, can be represented as a cumulative distribution function of time. Using this concept, we define the characteristic time scale for a multilayer diffusion process as the maximum value of the mean action time across the layered medium. For given initial conditions and internal and external boundary conditions, this approach leads to simple algebraic expressions for characterizing the time scale that depend on the physical and geometrical properties of the medium, such as the diffusivities and lengths of the layers. Numerical examples demonstrate that these expressions provide useful insight into explaining how the parameters in the model affect the time it takes for a multilayer diffusion process to reach steady state.

Characteristic time scales for diffusion processes through layers and across interfaces.

PubMed

Carr, Elliot J

2018-04-01

This paper presents a simple tool for characterizing the time scale for continuum diffusion processes through layered heterogeneous media. This mathematical problem is motivated by several practical applications such as heat transport in composite materials, flow in layered aquifers, and drug diffusion through the layers of the skin. In such processes, the physical properties of the medium vary across layers and internal boundary conditions apply at the interfaces between adjacent layers. To characterize the time scale, we use the concept of mean action time, which provides the mean time scale at each position in the medium by utilizing the fact that the transition of the transient solution of the underlying partial differential equation model, from initial state to steady state, can be represented as a cumulative distribution function of time. Using this concept, we define the characteristic time scale for a multilayer diffusion process as the maximum value of the mean action time across the layered medium. For given initial conditions and internal and external boundary conditions, this approach leads to simple algebraic expressions for characterizing the time scale that depend on the physical and geometrical properties of the medium, such as the diffusivities and lengths of the layers. Numerical examples demonstrate that these expressions provide useful insight into explaining how the parameters in the model affect the time it takes for a multilayer diffusion process to reach steady state.

Formalized landscape models for surveying and modelling tasks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Löwner, Marc-Oliver

2010-05-01

We present a formalization of main geomorphic landscape models, mainly the concept of slopes, to clarify the needs and potentials of surveying technologies and modelling approaches. Using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) it is implemented as a exchangeable Geography Markup Language (GML3) -based application schema and therefore supports shared measurement campaigns. Today, knowledge in Geomorphology is given synoptically in textbooks in a more or less lyrical way. This knowledge is hard to implement for the use of modelling algorithms or data storage and sharing questions. On the other hand physical based numerical modelling and high resolution surveying technologies enable us to investigate case scenarios within small scales. Bringing together such approaches and organizing our data in an appropriate way will need the formalization of the concepts and knowledge that is archived in the science of geomorphology. The main problem of comparing research results in geomorphology but is that the objects under investigation are composed of 3-dimensional geometries that change in time due to processes of material fluxes, e. g. soil erosion or mass movements. They have internal properties, e. g. soil texture or bulk density, that determine the effectiveness of these processes but are under change as well. The presented application schema is available on the Internet and therefore a first step to enable researchers to share information using an OGC's Web feature service. In this vein comparing modelling results of landscape evolution with results of other scientist's observations is possible. Compared to prevalent data concepts the model presented makes it possible to store information about landforms, their geometry and the characteristics in more detail. It allows to represent the 3D-geometry, the set of material properties and the genesis of a landform by associating processes to a geoobject. Thus, time slices of a geomorphic system can be represented as well as scenarios of landscape modelling. Commercial GI-software is not adapted to the needs of the science of geomorphology. Therefore the development of an application model i. e. a formal description of semantics is imperative to partake in technologies like Web Feature Services supporting interoperable data transfer.

Toward a better understanding on the role of prediction error on memory processes: From bench to clinic.

PubMed

Krawczyk, María C; Fernández, Rodrigo S; Pedreira, María E; Boccia, Mariano M

2017-07-01

Experimental psychology defines Prediction Error (PE) as a mismatch between expected and current events. It represents a unifier concept within the memory field, as it is the driving force of memory acquisition and updating. Prediction error induces updating of consolidated memories in strength or content by memory reconsolidation. This process has two different neurobiological phases, which involves the destabilization (labilization) of a consolidated memory followed by its restabilization. The aim of this work is to emphasize the functional role of PE on the neurobiology of learning and memory, integrating and discussing different research areas: behavioral, neurobiological, computational and clinical psychiatry. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The lived experience of serenity: using Parse's research method.

PubMed

Kruse, B G

1999-04-01

Parse's research method was used to investigate the meaning of serenity for survivors of a life-threatening illness or traumatic event. Ten survivors of cancer told their stories of the meaning of serenity as they had lived it in their lives. Descriptions were aided by photographs chosen by each participant to represent the meaning of serenity for them. The structure of serenity was generated through the extraction-synthesis process. Four main concepts--steering-yielding with the flow, savoring remembered visions of engaging surroundings, abiding with aloneness-togetherness, and attesting to a loving presence--emerged and led to a theoretical structure of serenity from the human becoming perspective. Findings confirm serenity as a multidimensional process.

Evaluating standard terminologies for encoding allergy information.

PubMed

Goss, Foster R; Zhou, Li; Plasek, Joseph M; Broverman, Carol; Robinson, George; Middleton, Blackford; Rocha, Roberto A

2013-01-01

Allergy documentation and exchange are vital to ensuring patient safety. This study aims to analyze and compare various existing standard terminologies for representing allergy information. Five terminologies were identified, including the Systemized Nomenclature of Medical Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), National Drug File-Reference Terminology (NDF-RT), Medication Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA), Unique Ingredient Identifier (UNII), and RxNorm. A qualitative analysis was conducted to compare desirable characteristics of each terminology, including content coverage, concept orientation, formal definitions, multiple granularities, vocabulary structure, subset capability, and maintainability. A quantitative analysis was also performed to compare the content coverage of each terminology for (1) common food, drug, and environmental allergens and (2) descriptive concepts for common drug allergies, adverse reactions (AR), and no known allergies. Our qualitative results show that SNOMED CT fulfilled the greatest number of desirable characteristics, followed by NDF-RT, RxNorm, UNII, and MedDRA. Our quantitative results demonstrate that RxNorm had the highest concept coverage for representing drug allergens, followed by UNII, SNOMED CT, NDF-RT, and MedDRA. For food and environmental allergens, UNII demonstrated the highest concept coverage, followed by SNOMED CT. For representing descriptive allergy concepts and adverse reactions, SNOMED CT and NDF-RT showed the highest coverage. Only SNOMED CT was capable of representing unique concepts for encoding no known allergies. The proper terminology for encoding a patient's allergy is complex, as multiple elements need to be captured to form a fully structured clinical finding. Our results suggest that while gaps still exist, a combination of SNOMED CT and RxNorm can satisfy most criteria for encoding common allergies and provide sufficient content coverage.

Evaluating standard terminologies for encoding allergy information

PubMed Central

Goss, Foster R; Zhou, Li; Plasek, Joseph M; Broverman, Carol; Robinson, George; Middleton, Blackford; Rocha, Roberto A

2013-01-01

Objective Allergy documentation and exchange are vital to ensuring patient safety. This study aims to analyze and compare various existing standard terminologies for representing allergy information. Methods Five terminologies were identified, including the Systemized Nomenclature of Medical Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), National Drug File–Reference Terminology (NDF-RT), Medication Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA), Unique Ingredient Identifier (UNII), and RxNorm. A qualitative analysis was conducted to compare desirable characteristics of each terminology, including content coverage, concept orientation, formal definitions, multiple granularities, vocabulary structure, subset capability, and maintainability. A quantitative analysis was also performed to compare the content coverage of each terminology for (1) common food, drug, and environmental allergens and (2) descriptive concepts for common drug allergies, adverse reactions (AR), and no known allergies. Results Our qualitative results show that SNOMED CT fulfilled the greatest number of desirable characteristics, followed by NDF-RT, RxNorm, UNII, and MedDRA. Our quantitative results demonstrate that RxNorm had the highest concept coverage for representing drug allergens, followed by UNII, SNOMED CT, NDF-RT, and MedDRA. For food and environmental allergens, UNII demonstrated the highest concept coverage, followed by SNOMED CT. For representing descriptive allergy concepts and adverse reactions, SNOMED CT and NDF-RT showed the highest coverage. Only SNOMED CT was capable of representing unique concepts for encoding no known allergies. Conclusions The proper terminology for encoding a patient's allergy is complex, as multiple elements need to be captured to form a fully structured clinical finding. Our results suggest that while gaps still exist, a combination of SNOMED CT and RxNorm can satisfy most criteria for encoding common allergies and provide sufficient content coverage. PMID:23396542

On the universal structure of human lexical semantics

PubMed Central

Sutton, Logan; Smith, Eric; Moore, Cristopher; Wilkins, Jon F.; Maddieson, Ian; Croft, William

2016-01-01

How universal is human conceptual structure? The way concepts are organized in the human brain may reflect distinct features of cultural, historical, and environmental background in addition to properties universal to human cognition. Semantics, or meaning expressed through language, provides indirect access to the underlying conceptual structure, but meaning is notoriously difficult to measure, let alone parameterize. Here, we provide an empirical measure of semantic proximity between concepts using cross-linguistic dictionaries to translate words to and from languages carefully selected to be representative of worldwide diversity. These translations reveal cases where a particular language uses a single “polysemous” word to express multiple concepts that another language represents using distinct words. We use the frequency of such polysemies linking two concepts as a measure of their semantic proximity and represent the pattern of these linkages by a weighted network. This network is highly structured: Certain concepts are far more prone to polysemy than others, and naturally interpretable clusters of closely related concepts emerge. Statistical analysis of the polysemies observed in a subset of the basic vocabulary shows that these structural properties are consistent across different language groups, and largely independent of geography, environment, and the presence or absence of a literary tradition. The methods developed here can be applied to any semantic domain to reveal the extent to which its conceptual structure is, similarly, a universal attribute of human cognition and language use. PMID:26831113

[The general concepts of development and the principle of sustainable development].

PubMed

Romanov, Iu A

1995-01-01

A concept of the sustainable development principle proposed by the United Nations/International Committee on Environment and Development (ICED, 1987) and gained acceptance at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio-de-Janeiro, 1992) lies not in the notion of a sustained character of the development but in an understanding of the development as a steadily and long existing and maintained process that is in advocating the stability of the development. It is known, that the state instability of open self-organizing and self-developing systems including the social ones is the the source of the development having a probabilistic, bifurcate and not quite predictable character. Such an understanding of the development should be well represented in the action initiated in the frame work of national and international state ecological policies.

Cross-stiffened continuous fiber structures

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ewen, John R.; Suarez, Jim A.

1993-01-01

Under NASA's Novel Composites for Wing and Fuselage Applications (NCWFA) program, Contract NAS1-18784, Grumman is evaluating the structural efficiency of graphite/epoxy cross-stiffened panel elements fabricated using innovative textile preforms and cost effective Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) and Resin Film Infusion (RFI) processes. Two three-dimensional woven preform assembly concepts have been defined for application to a representative window belt design typically found in a commercial transport airframe. The 3D woven architecture for each of these concepts is different; one is vertically woven in the plane of the window belt geometry and the other is loom woven in a compressed state similar to an unfolded eggcrate. The feasibility of both designs has been demonstrated in the fabrication of small test element assemblies. These elements and the final window belt assemblies will be structurally tested, and results compared.

Ghanaian Teacher Trainees' Conceptual Understanding of Stoichiometry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hanson, Ruby

2015-01-01

Chemical stoichiometry is a conceptual framework that encompasses other concepts such as the mole, writing of chemical equations in word and representative form, balancing of equations and the equilibrium concept. The underlying concepts enable students to understand relationships among entities of matter and required amounts for use when…

Ghanaian Teacher Trainees' Conceptual Understanding of Stoichiometry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hanson, Ruby

2016-01-01

Chemical stoichiometry is a conceptual framework that encompasses other concepts such as the mole, writing of chemical equations in word and representative form, balancing of equations and the equilibrium concept. The underlying concepts enable students to understand relationships among entities of matter and required amounts for use when…

Behavioral similarity measurement based on image processing for robots that use imitative learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sterpin B., Dante G.; Martinez S., Fernando; Jacinto G., Edwar

2017-02-01

In the field of the artificial societies, particularly those are based on memetics, imitative behavior is essential for the development of cultural evolution. Applying this concept for robotics, through imitative learning, a robot can acquire behavioral patterns from another robot. Assuming that the learning process must have an instructor and, at least, an apprentice, the fact to obtain a quantitative measurement for their behavioral similarity, would be potentially useful, especially in artificial social systems focused on cultural evolution. In this paper the motor behavior of both kinds of robots, for two simple tasks, is represented by 2D binary images, which are processed in order to measure their behavioral similarity. The results shown here were obtained comparing some similarity measurement methods for binary images.

A Study to Determine the Contribution Made by Concept Maps to a Computer Architecture and Organization Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aydogan, Tuncay; Ergun, Serap

2016-01-01

Concept mapping is a method of graphical learning that can be beneficial as a study method for concept linking and organization. Concept maps, which provide an elegant, easily understood representation of an expert's domain knowledge, are tools for organizing and representing knowledge. These tools have been used in educational environments to…

Self-organizing maps for learning the edit costs in graph matching.

PubMed

Neuhaus, Michel; Bunke, Horst

2005-06-01

Although graph matching and graph edit distance computation have become areas of intensive research recently, the automatic inference of the cost of edit operations has remained an open problem. In the present paper, we address the issue of learning graph edit distance cost functions for numerically labeled graphs from a corpus of sample graphs. We propose a system of self-organizing maps (SOMs) that represent the distance measuring spaces of node and edge labels. Our learning process is based on the concept of self-organization. It adapts the edit costs in such a way that the similarity of graphs from the same class is increased, whereas the similarity of graphs from different classes decreases. The learning procedure is demonstrated on two different applications involving line drawing graphs and graphs representing diatoms, respectively.

Ocean feature recognition using genetic algorithms with fuzzy fitness functions (GA/F3)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ankenbrandt, C. A.; Buckles, B. P.; Petry, F. E.; Lybanon, M.

1990-01-01

A model for genetic algorithms with semantic nets is derived for which the relationships between concepts is depicted as a semantic net. An organism represents the manner in which objects in a scene are attached to concepts in the net. Predicates between object pairs are continuous valued truth functions in the form of an inverse exponential function (e sub beta lxl). 1:n relationships are combined via the fuzzy OR (Max (...)). Finally, predicates between pairs of concepts are resolved by taking the average of the combined predicate values of the objects attached to the concept at the tail of the arc representing the predicate in the semantic net. The method is illustrated by applying it to the identification of oceanic features in the North Atlantic.

Nano-array based monolithic catalysts: Concept, rational materials design and tunable catalytic performance

DOE PAGES

Ren, Zheng; Guo, Yanbing; Gao, Pu-Xian

2015-03-20

Monolithic catalysts, also known as structured catalysts, represent an important catalyst configuration widely used in automotive, chemical, and energy industries. However, several issues associated with washcoat based monolithic catalyst preparation are ever present, such as compromised materials utilization efficiency due to a less-than-ideal wash coating process, difficulty in precise and optimum microstructure control and lack of structure-property correlation. Here, in this mini-review, we introduce the concept of nano-array catalyst, a new type of monolithic catalyst featuring high catalyst utilization efficiency, good thermal/mechanical robustness, and catalytic performance tunability. A comprehensive overview is presented with detailed discussion of the strategies for nano-arraymore » catalyst preparation and rational catalytic activity adjustment enabled by the well-defined nano-array geometry. Specifically their scalable fabrication processes are reviewed in conjunction with discussion of their various catalytic oxidation reaction performances at low temperature. Finally, we hope this review will serve as a timely and useful research guide for rational design and utilization of the new type of monolithic catalysts.« less

On the quantum mechanics of consciousness, with application to anomalous phenomena

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jahn, R.G.; Dunne, B.J.

1986-08-01

Theoretical explication of a growing body of empirical data on consciousness-related anomalous phenomena is unlikely to be achieved in terms of known physical processes. Rather, it will first be necessary to formulate the basic role of consciousness in the definition of reality before such anomalous experience can adequately be represented. This paper takes the position that reality is constituted only in the interaction of consciousness with its environment, and therefore that any scheme of conceptual organization developed to represent that reality must reflect the processes of consciousness as well as those of its environment. In this spirit, the concepts andmore » formalisms of elementary quantum mechanics, as originally proposed to explain anomalous atomic-scale physical phenomena, are appropriated via metaphor to represent the general characteristics of consciousness interacting with any environment. More specifically, if consciousness is represented by a quantum mechanical wave function, and its environment by an appropriate potential profile, Schrodinger wave mechanics defines eigenfunctions and eigenvalues that can be associated with the cognitive and emotional experiences of that consciousness in that environment. To articulate this metaphor it is necessary to associate certain aspects of the formalism, such as the coordinate system, the quantum numbers, and even the metric itself, with various impressionistic descriptors of consciousness, such as its intensity, perspective, approach/avoidance attitude, balance between cognitive and emotional activity, and receptive/assertive disposition.« less

Technology for large space systems: A special bibliography with indexes (supplement 03)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1980-01-01

A bibliography containing 217 abstracts addressing the technology for large space systems is presented. State of the art and advanced concepts concerning interactive analysis and design, structural concepts, control systems, electronics, advanced materials, assembly concepts, propulsion, solar power satellite systems, and flight experiments are represented.

Mining Diagnostic Assessment Data for Concept Similarity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Madhyastha, Tara; Hunt, Earl

2009-01-01

This paper introduces a method for mining multiple-choice assessment data for similarity of the concepts represented by the multiple choice responses. The resulting similarity matrix can be used to visualize the distance between concepts in a lower-dimensional space. This gives an instructor a visualization of the relative difficulty of concepts…

Student Conceptions of Oral Presentations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Joughin, Gordon

2007-01-01

A phonographic study of students' experience of oral presentations in an open learning theology programme constituted three contrasting conceptions of oral presentations--as transmission of ideas; as a test of students' understanding of what they were studying; and as a position to be argued. Each of these conceptions represented a combination of…

Two Influential Primate Classifications Logically Aligned

PubMed Central

Franz, Nico M.; Pier, Naomi M.; Reeder, Deeann M.; Chen, Mingmin; Yu, Shizhuo; Kianmajd, Parisa; Bowers, Shawn; Ludäscher, Bertram

2016-01-01

Classifications and phylogenies of perceived natural entities change in the light of new evidence. Taxonomic changes, translated into Code-compliant names, frequently lead to name:meaning dissociations across succeeding treatments. Classification standards such as the Mammal Species of the World (MSW) may experience significant levels of taxonomic change from one edition to the next, with potential costs to long-term, large-scale information integration. This circumstance challenges the biodiversity and phylogenetic data communities to express taxonomic congruence and incongruence in ways that both humans and machines can process, that is, to logically represent taxonomic alignments across multiple classifications. We demonstrate that such alignments are feasible for two classifications of primates corresponding to the second and third MSW editions. Our approach has three main components: (i) use of taxonomic concept labels, that is name sec. author (where sec. means according to), to assemble each concept hierarchy separately via parent/child relationships; (ii) articulation of select concepts across the two hierarchies with user-provided Region Connection Calculus (RCC-5) relationships; and (iii) the use of an Answer Set Programming toolkit to infer and visualize logically consistent alignments of these input constraints. Our use case entails the Primates sec. Groves (1993; MSW2–317 taxonomic concepts; 233 at the species level) and Primates sec. Groves (2005; MSW3–483 taxonomic concepts; 376 at the species level). Using 402 RCC-5 input articulations, the reasoning process yields a single, consistent alignment and 153,111 Maximally Informative Relations that constitute a comprehensive meaning resolution map for every concept pair in the Primates sec. MSW2/MSW3. The complete alignment, and various partitions thereof, facilitate quantitative analyses of name:meaning dissociation, revealing that nearly one in three taxonomic names are not reliable across treatments—in the sense of the same name identifying congruent taxonomic meanings. The RCC-5 alignment approach is potentially widely applicable in systematics and can achieve scalable, precise resolution of semantically evolving name usages in synthetic, next-generation biodiversity, and phylogeny data platforms. PMID:27009895

Validity as a social imperative for assessment in health professions education: a concept analysis.

PubMed

Marceau, Mélanie; Gallagher, Frances; Young, Meredith; St-Onge, Christina

2018-06-01

Assessment can have far-reaching consequences for future health care professionals and for society. Thus, it is essential to establish the quality of assessment. Few modern approaches to validity are well situated to ensure the quality of complex assessment approaches, such as authentic and programmatic assessments. Here, we explore and delineate the concept of validity as a social imperative in the context of assessment in health professions education (HPE) as a potential framework for examining the quality of complex and programmatic assessment approaches. We conducted a concept analysis using Rodgers' evolutionary method to describe the concept of validity as a social imperative in the context of assessment in HPE. Supported by an academic librarian, we developed and executed a search strategy across several databases for literature published between 1995 and 2016. From a total of 321 citations, we identified 67 articles that met our inclusion criteria. Two team members analysed the texts using a specified approach to qualitative data analysis. Consensus was achieved through full team discussions. Attributes that characterise the concept were: (i) demonstration of the use of evidence considered credible by society to document the quality of assessment; (ii) validation embedded through the assessment process and score interpretation; (iii) documented validity evidence supporting the interpretation of the combination of assessment findings, and (iv) demonstration of a justified use of a variety of evidence (quantitative and qualitative) to document the quality of assessment strategies. The emerging concept of validity as a social imperative highlights some areas of focus in traditional validation frameworks, whereas some characteristics appear unique to HPE and move beyond traditional frameworks. The study reflects the importance of embedding consideration for society and societal concerns throughout the assessment and validation process, and may represent a potential lens through which to examine the quality of complex and programmatic assessment approaches. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and The Association for the Study of Medical Education.

[Intra-individual heterostyly in Atriplex halimus L. (Amaranthaceae)].

PubMed

Talamali, Amel; Gorenflot, Robert; Dutuit, Pierre

2007-12-01

Classically, the Atriplex halimus L. female flower is perianthless, has two bracteoles, one ovary and one style. Considering bracteoles, one can distinguish, among the representatives of two Tunisian populations, three phenotypes of female flowers, each of them being distributed in three types according to the style length. Male flowers produce three types of pollen. This is the only known example of intra-individual heterostyly in unisexual flowers. These results question the classical concept of individual. The authors discuss a possible process implying indirectly hybridisation and introgression between A. halimus and A. nummularia.

Intervention into a turbulent urban situation: A case study. Ph.D. Thesis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Caldwell, G. M., Jr.

1973-01-01

The application is reported of NASA management philosophy and techniques within New Castle County, Delaware, to meet actual problems of community violence. It resulted in restructuring the county approach to problems of this nature, and development of a comprehensive system for planning, based on the NASA planning process. The method involved federal, state, and local resources with community representatives in solving the problems. The concept of a turbulent environment is presented with parallels drawn between NASA management experience and problems of management within an urban arena.

A cognitive-consistency based model of population wide attitude change.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Lakkaraju, Kiran; Speed, Ann Elizabeth

Attitudes play a significant role in determining how individuals process information and behave. In this paper we have developed a new computational model of population wide attitude change that captures the social level: how individuals interact and communicate information, and the cognitive level: how attitudes and concept interact with each other. The model captures the cognitive aspect by representing each individuals as a parallel constraint satisfaction network. The dynamics of this model are explored through a simple attitude change experiment where we vary the social network and distribution of attitudes in a population.

Ultra-thin Solid-State Li-Ion Electrolyte Membrane Facilitated by a Self-Healing Polymer Matrix.

PubMed

Whiteley, Justin M; Taynton, Philip; Zhang, Wei; Lee, Se-Hee

2015-11-18

Thin solid membranes are formed by a new strategy, whereby an in situ derived self-healing polymer matrix that penetrates the void space of an inorganic solid is created. The concept is applied as a separator in an all-solid-state battery with an FeS2 -based cathode and achieves tremendous performance for over 200 cycles. Processing in dry conditions represents a paradigm shift for incorporating high active-material mass loadings into mixed-matrix membranes. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Diversity must start somewhere: the experience of one college of nursing.

PubMed

Peery, Annette I; Julian, Phil; Avery, Jeanette; Henry, Susan L

2013-01-01

The concept of diversity varies widely in its definition, conceptualization and connotations. Addressing issues of diversity within a college of nursing is necessary if the cultures of our academic units are to change and become more inclusive. The article provides an overview of how this CON began to address changing its culture to one of a more inclusive nature and across all groups represented within the college, not bound only by ethnicity and gender. The process described in this article may provide an example for others to follow.

Modular organization and hospital performance.

PubMed

Kuntz, Ludwig; Vera, Antonio

2007-02-01

The concept of modularization represents a modern form of organization, which contains the vertical disaggregation of the firm and the use of market mechanisms within hierarchies. The objective of this paper is to examine whether the use of modular structures has a positive effect on hospital performance. The empirical section makes use of multiple regression analyses and leads to the main result that modularization does not have a positive effect on hospital performance. However, the analysis also finds out positive efficiency effects of two central ideas of modularization, namely process orientation and internal market mechanisms.

Refining of metallurgical-grade silicon

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dietl, J.

1986-01-01

A basic requirement of large scale solar cell fabrication is to provide low cost base material. Unconventional refining of metallurical grade silicon represents one of the most promising ways of silicon meltstock processing. The refining concept is based on an optimized combination of metallurgical treatments. Commercially available crude silicon, in this sequence, requires a first pyrometallurgical step by slagging, or, alternatively, solvent extraction by aluminum. After grinding and leaching, high purity qualtiy is gained as an advanced stage of refinement. To reach solar grade quality a final pyrometallurgical step is needed: liquid-gas extraction.

Logic Dynamics for Deductive Inference -- Its Stability and Neural Basis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsuda, Ichiro

2014-12-01

We propose a dynamical model that represents a process of deductive inference. We discuss the stability of logic dynamics and a neural basis for the dynamics. We propose a new concept of descriptive stability, thereby enabling a structure of stable descriptions of mathematical models concerning dynamic phenomena to be clarified. The present theory is based on the wider and deeper thoughts of John S. Nicolis. In particular, it is based on our joint paper on the chaos theory of human short-term memories with a magic number of seven plus or minus two.

Hybrid and electric advanced vehicle systems (heavy) simulation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hammond, R. A.; Mcgehee, R. K.

1981-01-01

A computer program to simulate hybrid and electric advanced vehicle systems (HEAVY) is described. It is intended for use early in the design process: concept evaluation, alternative comparison, preliminary design, control and management strategy development, component sizing, and sensitivity studies. It allows the designer to quickly, conveniently, and economically predict the performance of a proposed drive train. The user defines the system to be simulated using a library of predefined component models that may be connected to represent a wide variety of propulsion systems. The development of three models are discussed as examples.

Linear aerospike engine. [for reusable single-stage-to-orbit vehicle

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kirby, F. M.; Martinez, A.

1977-01-01

A description is presented of a dual-fuel modular split-combustor linear aerospike engine concept. The considered engine represents an approach to an integrated engine for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle. The engine burns two fuels (hydrogen and a hydrocarbon) with oxygen in separate combustors. Combustion gases expand on a linear aerospike nozzle. An engine preliminary design is discussed. Attention is given to the evaluation process for selecting the optimum number of modules or divisions of the engine, aspects of cooling and power cycle balance, and details of engine operation.

ICESat (GLAS) Science Processing Software Document Series. Volume 3; GLAS Science Software Requirements Document; Ver 2.1

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jester, Peggy L.; Lee, Jeffrey; Zukor, Dorothy J. (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

This document addresses the software requirements of the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) Standard Data Software (SDS) supporting the GLAS instrument on the EOS ICESat Spacecraft. This Software Requirements Document represents the initial collection of the technical engineering information for the GLAS SDS. This information is detailed within the second of four main volumes of the Standard documentation, the Product Specification volume. This document is a "roll-out" from the governing volume outline containing the Concept and Requirements sections.

Sources of work motivation of business leaders in the USA and South Africa: a cross-cultural comparison using the Motivational Sources Inventory.

PubMed

Barbuto, John E; Gifford, Gregory T

2007-10-01

Motivational differences in response to the Motivation Sources Inventory were tested between U.S. (n = 138) and South-African (n = 114) work samples. Analysis indicated that American managers scored significantly higher on intrinsic process (fun), while South-African managers scored significantly higher on self-concept external and goal internalization when measured using ratio analysis. Replication and extension with large groups representative of populations of interest in conjunction with Hofstede's cultural dimensions could allow generalization.

An Analysis of the Extent of Social Inclusion and Equity Consideration in Malawi’s National HIV and AIDS Policy Review Process

PubMed Central

Chinyama, Mathews Junior; MacLachlan, Malcolm; McVeigh, Joanne; Huss, Tessy; Gawamadzi, Sylvester

2018-01-01

Background: Equity and social inclusion for vulnerable groups in policy development processes and resulting documents remain a challenge globally. Most often, the marginalization of vulnerable groups is overlooked in both the planning and practice of health service delivery. Such marginalization may occur because authorities deem the targeting of those who already have better access to healthcare a cheaper and easier way to achieve short-term health gains. The Government of Malawi wishes to achieve an equitable and inclusive HIV and AIDS Policy. The aim of this study is to assess the extent to which the Malawi Policy review process addressed regional and international health priorities of equity and social inclusion for vulnerable groups in the policy content and policy revision process. Methods: This research design comprised two phases. First, the content of the Malawi HIV and AIDS Policy was assessed using EquiFrame regarding its coverage of 21 Core Concepts of human rights and inclusion of 12 Vulnerable Groups. Second, the engagement of vulnerable groups in the policy process was assessed using the EquIPP matrix. For the latter, 10 interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of representatives of public sector, civil society organizations and development partners who participated in the policy revision process. Data was also collected from documented information of the policy processes. Results: Our analyses indicated that the Malawi HIV and AIDS Policy had a relatively high coverage of Core Concepts of human rights and Vulnerable Groups; although with some notable omissions. The analyses also found that reasonable steps were taken to engage and promote participation of vulnerable groups in the planning, development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation processes of the HIV and AIDS Policy, although again, with some notable exceptions. This is the first study to use both EquiFrame and EquIPP as complimentary tools to assess the content and process of policy. Conclusion: While the findings indicate inclusive processes, commitment to Core Concepts of human rights and inclusion of Vulnerable Groups in relation to the Malawi HIV and AIDS Policy, the results also point to areas in which social inclusion and equity could be further strengthened. PMID:29626397

Information Compression, Multiple Alignment, and the Representation and Processing of Knowledge in the Brain

PubMed Central

Wolff, J. Gerard

2016-01-01

The SP theory of intelligence, with its realization in the SP computer model, aims to simplify and integrate observations and concepts across artificial intelligence, mainstream computing, mathematics, and human perception and cognition, with information compression as a unifying theme. This paper describes how abstract structures and processes in the theory may be realized in terms of neurons, their interconnections, and the transmission of signals between neurons. This part of the SP theory—SP-neural—is a tentative and partial model for the representation and processing of knowledge in the brain. Empirical support for the SP theory—outlined in the paper—provides indirect support for SP-neural. In the abstract part of the SP theory (SP-abstract), all kinds of knowledge are represented with patterns, where a pattern is an array of atomic symbols in one or two dimensions. In SP-neural, the concept of a “pattern” is realized as an array of neurons called a pattern assembly, similar to Hebb's concept of a “cell assembly” but with important differences. Central to the processing of information in SP-abstract is information compression via the matching and unification of patterns (ICMUP) and, more specifically, information compression via the powerful concept of multiple alignment, borrowed and adapted from bioinformatics. Processes such as pattern recognition, reasoning and problem solving are achieved via the building of multiple alignments, while unsupervised learning is achieved by creating patterns from sensory information and also by creating patterns from multiple alignments in which there is a partial match between one pattern and another. It is envisaged that, in SP-neural, short-lived neural structures equivalent to multiple alignments will be created via an inter-play of excitatory and inhibitory neural signals. It is also envisaged that unsupervised learning will be achieved by the creation of pattern assemblies from sensory information and from the neural equivalents of multiple alignments, much as in the non-neural SP theory—and significantly different from the “Hebbian” kinds of learning which are widely used in the kinds of artificial neural network that are popular in computer science. The paper discusses several associated issues, with relevant empirical evidence. PMID:27857695

Information Compression, Multiple Alignment, and the Representation and Processing of Knowledge in the Brain.

PubMed

Wolff, J Gerard

2016-01-01

The SP theory of intelligence , with its realization in the SP computer model , aims to simplify and integrate observations and concepts across artificial intelligence, mainstream computing, mathematics, and human perception and cognition, with information compression as a unifying theme. This paper describes how abstract structures and processes in the theory may be realized in terms of neurons, their interconnections, and the transmission of signals between neurons. This part of the SP theory- SP-neural -is a tentative and partial model for the representation and processing of knowledge in the brain. Empirical support for the SP theory-outlined in the paper-provides indirect support for SP-neural. In the abstract part of the SP theory (SP-abstract), all kinds of knowledge are represented with patterns , where a pattern is an array of atomic symbols in one or two dimensions. In SP-neural, the concept of a "pattern" is realized as an array of neurons called a pattern assembly , similar to Hebb's concept of a "cell assembly" but with important differences. Central to the processing of information in SP-abstract is information compression via the matching and unification of patterns (ICMUP) and, more specifically, information compression via the powerful concept of multiple alignment , borrowed and adapted from bioinformatics. Processes such as pattern recognition, reasoning and problem solving are achieved via the building of multiple alignments, while unsupervised learning is achieved by creating patterns from sensory information and also by creating patterns from multiple alignments in which there is a partial match between one pattern and another. It is envisaged that, in SP-neural, short-lived neural structures equivalent to multiple alignments will be created via an inter-play of excitatory and inhibitory neural signals. It is also envisaged that unsupervised learning will be achieved by the creation of pattern assemblies from sensory information and from the neural equivalents of multiple alignments, much as in the non-neural SP theory-and significantly different from the "Hebbian" kinds of learning which are widely used in the kinds of artificial neural network that are popular in computer science. The paper discusses several associated issues, with relevant empirical evidence.

Cognitive Dissonance and Pediatric Procedural Pain Management: A Concept Clarification.

PubMed

Bice, April A

2018-06-01

Pediatric nurses have often reported that pain management is a vital part of patient care. Evidence, however, suggests pediatric procedural pain treatments are often underused. Cognitive dissonance, the mental conflict leading to unpleasant thoughts and or feelings, may be related to this evidence-based gap found between what pediatric nurses claim about procedural pain management (that it is important) and what they actually do (underutilize pain treatments). The purpose of this manuscript is to clarify and further develop the concept of cognitive dissonance in terms of its relationship to nurses' mental struggles with underutilization of pediatric procedural pain treatments. A more relevant and extended definition of cognitive dissonance is presented. The concept of cognitive dissonance was examined using Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis approach/framework. Analysis Methods: Through a six-step process of concept identification, setting and sample identification, data collection, data analysis, and future implication discussion, a more accurate and representative definition of cognitive dissonance is described. Databases used included CINAHL, Google Scholar, PsycINFO, ERIC, and PubMed. Seminal, recent, and relevant works were included in the review to adequately develop and clarify the concept. Procedural pain management breech among pediatric nurses is proposed to occur before the mental conflict produced. The unpleasant mental conflict created after the breech is followed by the nurse's determination to reduce mental conflict through attitude change followed by cognition change, which more closely reflects his or her behavior. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Integrating Green Building Criteria Into Housing Design Processes Case Study: Tropical Apartment At Kebon Melati, Jakarta

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farid, V. L.; Wonorahardjo, S.

2018-05-01

The implementation of Green Building criteria is relatively new in architectural practice, especially in Indonesia. Consequently, the integration of these criteria into design process has the potential to change the design process itself. The implementation of the green building criteria into the conventional design process will be discussed in this paper. The concept of this project is to design a residential unit with a natural air-conditioning system. To achieve this purpose, the Green Building criteria has been implemented since the beginning of the design process until the detailing process on the end of the project. Several studies was performed throughout the design process, such as: (1) Conceptual review, where several professionally proved theories related to Tropical Architecture and passive design are used for a reference, and (2) Computer simulations, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and wind tunnel simulation, used to represent the dynamic response of the surrounding environment towards the building. Hopefully this paper may become a reference for designing a green residential building.

Pacing: A concept analysis of a chronic pain intervention

PubMed Central

Jamieson-Lega, Kathryn; Berry, Robyn; Brown, Cary A

2013-01-01

BACKGROUND: The intervention of pacing is regularly recommended for chronic pain patients. However, pacing is poorly defined and appears to be interpreted in varying, potentially contradictory manners within the field of chronic pain. This conceptual lack of clarity has implications for effective service delivery and for researchers’ ability to conduct rigorous study. An examination of the background literature demonstrates that while pacing is often one part of a multidisciplinary pain management program, outcome research is hindered by a lack of a clear and shared definition of this currently ill-defined construct. OBJECTIVES: To conduct a formal concept analysis of the term ‘pacing’. METHODS: A standardized concept analysis process (including literature scoping to identify all uses of the concept, analysis to determine defining attributes of the concept and identification of model, borderline and contrary cases) was used to determine what the concept of pacing does and does not represent within the current evidence base. RESULTS: A conceptual model including the core attributes of action, time, balance, learning and self-management emerged. From these attributes, an evidence-based definition for pacing was composed and distributed to stakeholders for review. After consideration of stakeholder feedback, the emergent definition of pacing was finalized as follows: “Pacing is an active self-management strategy whereby individuals learn to balance time spent on activity and rest for the purpose of achieving increased function and participation in meaningful activities”. CONCLUSION: The findings of the present concept analysis will help to standardize the use and definition of the term pacing across disciplines for the purposes of both pain management and research. PMID:23717825

Integrating nursing diagnostic concepts into the medical entities dictionary using the ISO Reference Terminology Model for Nursing Diagnosis.

PubMed

Hwang, Jee-In; Cimino, James J; Bakken, Suzanne

2003-01-01

The purposes of the study were (1) to evaluate the usefulness of the International Standards Organization (ISO) Reference Terminology Model for Nursing Diagnoses as a terminology model for defining nursing diagnostic concepts in the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED) and (2) to create the additional hierarchical structures required for integration of nursing diagnostic concepts into the MED. The authors dissected nursing diagnostic terms from two source terminologies (Home Health Care Classification and the Omaha System) into the semantic categories of the ISO model. Consistent with the ISO model, they selected Focus and Judgment as required semantic categories for creating intensional definitions of nursing diagnostic concepts in the MED. Because the MED does not include Focus and Judgment hierarchies, the authors developed them to define the nursing diagnostic concepts. The ISO model was sufficient for dissecting the source terminologies into atomic terms. The authors identified 162 unique focus concepts from the 266 nursing diagnosis terms for inclusion in the Focus hierarchy. For the Judgment hierarchy, the authors precoordinated Judgment and Potentiality instead of using Potentiality as a qualifier of Judgment as in the ISO model. Impairment and Alteration were the most frequently occurring judgments. Nursing care represents a large proportion of health care activities; thus, it is vital that terms used by nurses are integrated into concept-oriented terminologies that provide broad coverage for the domain of health care. This study supports the utility of the ISO Reference Terminology Model for Nursing Diagnoses as a facilitator for the integration process.

Integrating Nursing Diagnostic Concepts into the Medical Entities Dictionary Using the ISO Reference Terminology Model for Nursing Diagnosis

PubMed Central

Hwang, Jee-In; Cimino, James J.; Bakken, Suzanne

2003-01-01

Objective: The purposes of the study were (1) to evaluate the usefulness of the International Standards Organization (ISO) Reference Terminology Model for Nursing Diagnoses as a terminology model for defining nursing diagnostic concepts in the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED) and (2) to create the additional hierarchical structures required for integration of nursing diagnostic concepts into the MED. Design and Measurements: The authors dissected nursing diagnostic terms from two source terminologies (Home Health Care Classification and the Omaha System) into the semantic categories of the ISO model. Consistent with the ISO model, they selected Focus and Judgment as required semantic categories for creating intensional definitions of nursing diagnostic concepts in the MED. Because the MED does not include Focus and Judgment hierarchies, the authors developed them to define the nursing diagnostic concepts. Results: The ISO model was sufficient for dissecting the source terminologies into atomic terms. The authors identified 162 unique focus concepts from the 266 nursing diagnosis terms for inclusion in the Focus hierarchy. For the Judgment hierarchy, the authors precoordinated Judgment and Potentiality instead of using Potentiality as a qualifier of Judgment as in the ISO model. Impairment and Alteration were the most frequently occurring judgments. Conclusions: Nursing care represents a large proportion of health care activities; thus, it is vital that terms used by nurses are integrated into concept-oriented terminologies that provide broad coverage for the domain of health care. This study supports the utility of the ISO Reference Terminology Model for Nursing Diagnoses as a facilitator for the integration process. PMID:12668692

Pacing: a concept analysis of the chronic pain intervention.

PubMed

Jamieson-Lega, Kathryn; Berry, Robyn; Brown, Cary A

2013-01-01

The intervention of pacing is regularly recommended for chronic pain patients. However, pacing is poorly defined and appears to be interpreted in varying, potentially contradictory manners within the field of chronic pain. This conceptual lack of clarity has implications for effective service delivery and for researchers' ability to conduct rigorous study. An examination of the background literature demonstrates that while pacing is often one part of a multidisciplinary pain management program, outcome research is hindered by a lack of a clear and shared definition of this currently ill-defined construct. To conduct a formal concept analysis of the term 'pacing'. A standardized concept analysis process (including literature scoping to identify all uses of the concept, analysis to determine defining attributes of the concept and identification of model, borderline and contrary cases) was used to determine what the concept of pacing does and does not represent within the current evidence base. A conceptual model including the core attributes of action, time, balance, learning and self-management emerged. From these attributes, an evidence-based definition for pacing was composed and distributed to stakeholders for review. After consideration of stakeholder feedback, the emergent definition of pacing was finalized as follows: "Pacing is an active self-management strategy whereby individuals learn to balance time spent on activity and rest for the purpose of achieving increased function and participation in meaningful activities". The findings of the present concept analysis will help to standardize the use and definition of the term pacing across disciplines for the purposes of both pain management and research.

Principles Supporting the Perceptional Teaching of Physics: A ``Practical Teaching Philosophy''

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kurki-Suonio, Kaarle

2011-03-01

This article sketches a framework of ideas developed in the context of decades of physics teacher-education that was entitled the "perceptional approach". Individual learning and the scientific enterprise are interpreted as different manifestations of the same process aimed at understanding the natural and social worlds. The process is understood to possess the basic nature of perception, where empirical meanings are first born and then conceptualised. The accumulation of perceived gestalts in the "structure of the mind" leads to structural perception and the generation of conceptual hierarchies, which form a general principle for the expansion of our understanding. The process undergoes hierarchical development from early sensory perception to individual learning and finally to science. The process is discussed in terms of a three-process dynamic. Scientific and technological processes are driven by the interaction of the mind and nature. They are embedded in the social process due to the interaction of individual minds. These sub-processes are defined by their aims: The scientific process affects the mind and aims at understanding; the technological process affects nature and aims at human well-being; and the social process aims at mutual agreement and cooperation. In hierarchical development the interaction of nature and the mind gets structured into a "methodical cycle" by procedures involving conscious activities. Its intuitive nature is preserved due to subordination of the procedures to empirical meanings. In physics, two dimensions of hierarchical development are distinguished: Unification development gives rise to a generalisation hierarchy of concepts; Quantification development transfers the empirical meanings to quantities, laws and theories representing successive hierarchical levels of quantitative concepts. Consequences for physics teaching are discussed in principle, and in the light of examples and experiences from physics teacher education.

Does an Emphasis on the Concept of Quantum States Enhance Students' Understanding of Quantum Mechanics?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Greca, Ileana Maria; Freire, Olival

Teaching physics implies making choices. In the case of teaching quantum physics, besides an educational choice - the didactic strategy - another choice must be made, an epistemological one, concerning the interpretation of quantum theory itself. These two choices are closely connected. We have chosen a didactic strategy that privileges the phenomenological-conceptual approach, with emphasis upon quantum features of the systems, instead of searching for classical analogies. This choice has led us to present quantum theory associated with an orthodox, yet realistic, interpretation of the concept of quantum state, considered as the key concept of quantum theory, representing the physical reality of a system, independent of measurement processes. The results of the mplementation of this strategy, with three groups of engineering students, showed that more than a half of them attained a reasonable understanding of the basics of quantum mechanics (QM) for this level. In addition, a high degree of satisfaction was attained with the classes as 80% of the students of the experimental groups claimed to have liked it and to be interested in learning more about QM.

Representations of body and space: theoretical concepts and controversies.

PubMed

Trojan, Jörg

2015-09-01

Recent years have seen a revived interest in how body and space are represented perceptually and how they affect human cognition and behaviour. Various conceptualisations of body and space have been proposed, alternately stressing neurophysiological, cognitive, or social aspects, but unified approaches are scarce. This short paper will give an overview of different views on body and space. At least three relevant dimensions can be identified in which concepts of body and space may differ: (1) perspective: while we conceptually differentiate between body and space perception, they imply each other and the underlying mechanisms overlap. (2) Level: representations of body and space may emerge at different processing levels, from spinal mechanisms guiding reflex movements to those we construct in our imagination. (3) Affect: representations of body and space are closely linked to affect, but this relationship has not received enough attention yet. Despite many empirical findings, our current views on body and space representations remain ambiguous. One problem may lie in the implicit diversity of "bodies" and "spaces" examined in different studies. Specifications of these concepts may help understand existing results better and are important for guiding future research.

Wikipedia Entries as a Source of CAR Navigation Landmarks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Binski, N.; Zhang, L.; Dalyot, S.

2016-06-01

Car navigation system devices provide today with an easy and simple solution to the basic concept of reaching a destination. Although these systems usually achieve this goal, they still deliver a limited and poor sequence of instructions that do not consider the human nature of using landmarks during wayfinding. This research paper addresses the concept of enriching navigation route instructions by adding supplementary route information in the form of landmarks. We aim at using a contributed source of landmarks information, which is easy to access, available, show high update rate, and have a large scale of information. For this, Wikipedia was chosen, since it represents the world's largest free encyclopaedia that includes information about many spatial entities. A survey and classification of available landmarks is implemented, coupled with ranking algorithms based on the entries' categories and attributes. These are aimed at retrieving the most relevant landmark information required that are valuable for the enrichment of a specific navigation route. The paper will present this methodology, together with examples and results, showing the feasibility of using this concept and its potential of enriching navigation processes.

The Mad Genius Stereotype: Still Alive and Well

PubMed Central

Baudson, Tanja G.

2016-01-01

Scientists and laypeople agree on high ability as a defining feature of giftedness. Yet their views on gifted people's socioemotional characteristics diverge. Most studies find the gifted to be similar or slightly superior to average-ability persons in these domains (“harmony hypothesis”). However, subjective conceptions and media representations, most of which have focused on gifted children and youth, stress the socioemotional downsides of giftedness (“disharmony hypothesis”), affecting highly able individuals and those around them, thus hampering individual development. To date, most studies on gifted stereotypes have examined selective samples, mostly teachers. The present study is the first to provide representative data on conceptions of gifted individuals in general. A brief survey of 1029 German adults assessed quality and prevalence of stereotypes about gifted individuals, without an explicit focus on children and/or adolescents. Latent class analysis (LCA) revealed two conceptions of giftedness, with twice as many “disharmonious” than “harmonious” raters. Male gender, single parenthood, unemployment, higher income or negative attitudes toward the gifted predicted disharmonious ratings. However, effects were small, suggesting future studies look deeper into the processes of stereotype formation and maintenance. PMID:27047409

The Mad Genius Stereotype: Still Alive and Well.

PubMed

Baudson, Tanja G

2016-01-01

Scientists and laypeople agree on high ability as a defining feature of giftedness. Yet their views on gifted people's socioemotional characteristics diverge. Most studies find the gifted to be similar or slightly superior to average-ability persons in these domains ("harmony hypothesis"). However, subjective conceptions and media representations, most of which have focused on gifted children and youth, stress the socioemotional downsides of giftedness ("disharmony hypothesis"), affecting highly able individuals and those around them, thus hampering individual development. To date, most studies on gifted stereotypes have examined selective samples, mostly teachers. The present study is the first to provide representative data on conceptions of gifted individuals in general. A brief survey of 1029 German adults assessed quality and prevalence of stereotypes about gifted individuals, without an explicit focus on children and/or adolescents. Latent class analysis (LCA) revealed two conceptions of giftedness, with twice as many "disharmonious" than "harmonious" raters. Male gender, single parenthood, unemployment, higher income or negative attitudes toward the gifted predicted disharmonious ratings. However, effects were small, suggesting future studies look deeper into the processes of stereotype formation and maintenance.

Upscaling from research watersheds: an essential stage of trustworthy general-purpose hydrologic model building

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McNamara, J. P.; Semenova, O.; Restrepo, P. J.

2011-12-01

Highly instrumented research watersheds provide excellent opportunities for investigating hydrologic processes. A danger, however, is that the processes observed at a particular research watershed are too specific to the watershed and not representative even of the larger scale watershed that contains that particular research watershed. Thus, models developed based on those partial observations may not be suitable for general hydrologic use. Therefore demonstrating the upscaling of hydrologic process from research watersheds to larger watersheds is essential to validate concepts and test model structure. The Hydrograph model has been developed as a general-purpose process-based hydrologic distributed system. In its applications and further development we evaluate the scaling of model concepts and parameters in a wide range of hydrologic landscapes. All models, either lumped or distributed, are based on a discretization concept. It is common practice that watersheds are discretized into so called hydrologic units or hydrologic landscapes possessing assumed homogeneous hydrologic functioning. If a model structure is fixed, the difference in hydrologic functioning (difference in hydrologic landscapes) should be reflected by a specific set of model parameters. Research watersheds provide the possibility for reasonable detailed combining of processes into some typical hydrologic concept such as hydrologic units, hydrologic forms, and runoff formation complexes in the Hydrograph model. And here by upscaling we imply not the upscaling of a single process but upscaling of such unified hydrologic functioning. The simulation of runoff processes for the Dry Creek research watershed, Idaho, USA (27 km2) was undertaken using the Hydrograph model. The information on the watershed was provided by Boise State University and included a GIS database of watershed characteristics and a detailed hydrometeorological observational dataset. The model provided good simulation results in terms of runoff and variable states of soil and snow over a simulation period 2000 - 2009. The parameters of the model were hand-adjusted based on rational sense, observational data and available understanding of underlying processes. For the first run some processes as riparian vegetation impact on runoff and streamflow/groundwater interaction were handled in a conceptual way. It was shown that the use of Hydrograph model which requires modest amount of parameter calibration may serve also as a quality control for observations. Based on the obtained parameters values and process understanding at the research watershed the model was applied to the larger scale watersheds located in similar environment - the Boise River at South Fork (1660 km2) and Twin Springs (2155 km2). The evaluation of the results of such upscaling will be presented.

Ingredients for Life Artist Concept

NASA Image and Video Library

2005-07-27

This artist conception symbolically represents complex organic molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, seen in the early universe. These large molecules, comprised of carbon and hydrogen, are considered among the building blocks of life.

Significant and Basic Innovations in Urban Planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kolyasnikov, V. A.

2017-11-01

The article considers the development features of the innovative urban planning in the USSR and Russia in XVIII - XX centuries. Innovative urban planning is defined as an activity on innovations creation and their implementation to obtain a socio-economic, political, environmental or other effect. In the course of urban development history this activity represents a cyclic wave process in which there are phases of rise and fall. The study of cyclic waves in the development of innovative urban planning uses the concept of basic and epochal innovations selection. This concept was developed by scientists for the study of cyclic wave processes in economics. Its adaptation to the conditions of innovative urban planning development allows one to introduce the concept of “basic innovation” and “significant innovation” in the theory and practice of settlement formation and their systems as well as to identify opportunities to highlight these innovations in the history of Russian urban planning. From these positions, six innovation waves committed to the urban development over the past 300 years are being investigated. The observed basic innovations in the domestic urban area show that urban development is a vital area for ensuring the country’s geopolitical security. Basic innovations are translated in time and modernized under new conditions of urban planning development. In this regard, we can predict the development of four basic innovations in post-Soviet Russia.

Development of an item bank for food parenting practices based on published instruments and reports from Canadian and US parents.

PubMed

O'Connor, Teresia M; Pham, Truc; Watts, Allison W; Tu, Andrew W; Hughes, Sheryl O; Beauchamp, Mark R; Baranowski, Tom; Mâsse, Louise C

2016-08-01

Research to understand how parents influence their children's dietary intake and eating behaviors has expanded in the past decades and a growing number of instruments are available to assess food parenting practices. Unfortunately, there is no consensus on how constructs should be defined or operationalized, making comparison of results across studies difficult. The aim of this study was to develop a food parenting practice item bank with items from published scales and supplement with parenting practices that parents report using. Items from published scales were identified from two published systematic reviews along with an additional systematic review conducted for this study. Parents (n = 135) with children 5-12 years old from the US and Canada, stratified to represent the demographic distribution of each country, were recruited to participate in an online semi-qualitative survey on food parenting. Published items and parent responses were coded using the same framework to reduce the number of items into representative concepts using a binning and winnowing process. The literature contributed 1392 items and parents contributed 1985 items, which were reduced to 262 different food parenting concepts (26% exclusive from literature, 12% exclusive from parents, and 62% represented in both). Food parenting practices related to 'Structure of Food Environment' and 'Behavioral and Educational' were emphasized more by parent responses, while practices related to 'Consistency of Feeding Environment' and 'Emotional Regulation' were more represented among published items. The resulting food parenting item bank should next be calibrated with item response modeling for scientists to use in the future. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Aqueous organic chemistry in the atmosphere: sources and chemical processing of organic aerosols.

PubMed

McNeill, V Faye

2015-02-03

Over the past decade, it has become clear that aqueous chemical processes occurring in cloud droplets and wet atmospheric particles are an important source of organic atmospheric particulate matter. Reactions of water-soluble volatile (or semivolatile) organic gases (VOCs or SVOCs) in these aqueous media lead to the formation of highly oxidized organic particulate matter (secondary organic aerosol; SOA) and key tracer species, such as organosulfates. These processes are often driven by a combination of anthropogenic and biogenic emissions, and therefore their accurate representation in models is important for effective air quality management. Despite considerable progress, mechanistic understanding of some key aqueous processes is still lacking, and these pathways are incompletely represented in 3D atmospheric chemistry and air quality models. In this article, the concepts, historical context, and current state of the science of aqueous pathways of SOA formation are discussed.

Using simple manipulatives to improve student comprehension of a complex biological process: protein synthesis.

PubMed

Guzman, Karen; Bartlett, John

2012-01-01

Biological systems and living processes involve a complex interplay of biochemicals and macromolecular structures that can be challenging for undergraduate students to comprehend and, thus, misconceptions abound. Protein synthesis, or translation, is an example of a biological process for which students often hold many misconceptions. This article describes an exercise that was developed to illustrate the process of translation using simple objects to represent complex molecules. Animations, 3D physical models, computer simulations, laboratory experiments and classroom lectures are also used to reinforce the students' understanding of translation, but by focusing on the simple manipulatives in this exercise, students are better able to visualize concepts that can elude them when using the other methods. The translation exercise is described along with suggestions for background material, questions used to evaluate student comprehension and tips for using the manipulatives to identify common misconceptions. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Static and fatigue testing of full-scale fuselage panels fabricated using a Therm-X(R) process

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dinicola, Albert J.; Kassapoglou, Christos; Chou, Jack C.

1992-01-01

Large, curved, integrally stiffened composite panels representative of an aircraft fuselage structure were fabricated using a Therm-X process, an alternative concept to conventional two-sided hard tooling and contour vacuum bagging. Panels subsequently were tested under pure shear loading in both static and fatigue regimes to assess the adequacy of the manufacturing process, the effectiveness of damage tolerant design features co-cured with the structure, and the accuracy of finite element and closed-form predictions of postbuckling capability and failure load. Test results indicated the process yielded panels of high quality and increased damage tolerance through suppression of common failure modes such as skin-stiffener separation and frame-stiffener corner failure. Finite element analyses generally produced good predictions of postbuckled shape, and a global-local modelling technique yielded failure load predictions that were within 7% of the experimental mean.

Match graph generation for symbolic indirect correlation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lopresti, Daniel; Nagy, George; Joshi, Ashutosh

2006-01-01

Symbolic indirect correlation (SIC) is a new approach for bringing lexical context into the recognition of unsegmented signals that represent words or phrases in printed or spoken form. One way of viewing the SIC problem is to find the correspondence, if one exists, between two bipartite graphs, one representing the matching of the two lexical strings and the other representing the matching of the two signal strings. While perfect matching cannot be expected with real-world signals and while some degree of mismatch is allowed for in the second stage of SIC, such errors, if they are too numerous, can present a serious impediment to a successful implementation of the concept. In this paper, we describe a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of SIC match graph generation and examine the relatively simple, controlled cases of synthetic images of text strings typeset, both normally and in highly condensed fashion. We quantify and categorize the errors that arise, as well as present a variety of techniques we have developed to visualize the intermediate results of the SIC process.

A case-study in the clinical epidemiology of psoriatic arthritis: multistate models and causal arguments

PubMed Central

O'Keeffe, Aidan G; Tom, Brian D M; Farewell, Vernon T

2011-01-01

In psoriatic arthritis, permanent joint damage characterizes disease progression and represents a major debilitating aspect of the disease. Understanding the process of joint damage will assist in the treatment and disease management of patients. Multistate models provide a means to examine patterns of disease, such as symmetric joint damage. Additionally, the link between damage and the dynamic course of disease activity (represented by joint swelling and stress pain) at both the individual joint level and otherwise can be represented within a correlated multistate model framework. Correlation is reflected through the use of random effects for progressive models and robust variance estimation for non-progressive models. Such analyses, undertaken with data from a large psoriatic arthritis cohort, are discussed and the extent to which they permit causal reasoning is considered. For this, emphasis is given to the use of the Bradford Hill criteria for causation in observational studies and the concept of local (in)dependence to capture the dynamic nature of the relationships. PMID:22163372

System properties, feedback control and effector coordination of human temperature regulation.

PubMed

Werner, Jürgen

2010-05-01

The aim of human temperature regulation is to protect body processes by establishing a relative constancy of deep body temperature (regulated variable), in spite of external and internal influences on it. This is basically achieved by a distributed multi-sensor, multi-processor, multi-effector proportional feedback control system. The paper explains why proportional control implies inherent deviations of the regulated variable from the value in the thermoneutral zone. The concept of feedback of the thermal state of the body, conveniently represented by a high-weighted core temperature (T (c)) and low-weighted peripheral temperatures (T (s)) is equivalent to the control concept of "auxiliary feedback control", using a main (regulated) variable (T (c)), supported by an auxiliary variable (T (s)). This concept implies neither regulation of T (s) nor feedforward control. Steady-states result in the closed control-loop, when the open-loop properties of the (heat transfer) process are compatible with those of the thermoregulatory processors. They are called operating points or balance points and are achieved due to the inherent property of dynamical stability of the thermoregulatory feedback loop. No set-point and no comparison of signals (e.g. actual-set value) are necessary. Metabolic heat production and sweat production, though receiving the same information about the thermal state of the body, are independent effectors with different thresholds and gains. Coordination between one of these effectors and the vasomotor effector is achieved by the fact that changes in the (heat transfer) process evoked by vasomotor control are taken into account by the metabolic/sweat processor.

Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students' Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations.

PubMed

Dasgupta, Annwesa P; Anderson, Trevor R; Pelaez, Nancy J

2016-01-01

Researchers, instructors, and funding bodies in biology education are unanimous about the importance of developing students' competence in experimental design. Despite this, only limited measures are available for assessing such competence development, especially in the areas of molecular and cellular biology. Also, existing assessments do not measure how well students use standard symbolism to visualize biological experiments. We propose an assessment-design process that 1) provides background knowledge and questions for developers of new "experimentation assessments," 2) elicits practices of representing experiments with conventional symbol systems, 3) determines how well the assessment reveals expert knowledge, and 4) determines how well the instrument exposes student knowledge and difficulties. To illustrate this process, we developed the Neuron Assessment and coded responses from a scientist and four undergraduate students using the Rubric for Experimental Design and the Concept-Reasoning Mode of representation (CRM) model. Some students demonstrated sound knowledge of concepts and representations. Other students demonstrated difficulty with depicting treatment and control group data or variability in experimental outcomes. Our process, which incorporates an authentic research situation that discriminates levels of visualization and experimentation abilities, shows potential for informing assessment design in other disciplines. © 2016 A. P. Dasgupta et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2016 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

Effects of Concept Mapping on Creativity in Photo Stories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simper, Natalie; Reeve, Richard; Kirby, J. R.

2016-01-01

This research tested the use of concept map planning to support the development of creativity in photo stories, hypothesizing that skills taught to support organization would improve creativity. Concept maps are a type of graphic organizer, used to represent an ordering of ideas with nodes and linking words that form propositional statements. They…

The Appropriateness of the Concept Mastery Test for Graduate Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goolsby, Thomas M., Jr.

A study was conducted to determine the appropriateness of the Concept Mastery Test for graduate students enrolled in an introductory research methodology course. Ss represented a cross-section of students entering a master's program at a large southeastern university. The Concept Mastery Test (CMT), the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (ND), and the…

The Formation of Initial Components of Number Concepts in Mexican Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Solovieva, Yulia; Quintanar, Luis; Ortiz, Gerardo

2012-01-01

The initial formation of number concept represents one of the essential aspects of learning mathematics at the primary school. Children commonly show strong difficulties and absence of comprehension of symbolic and abstract nature of concept of number. The objective of the present study was to show the effectiveness of original method for…

An Overburdened Term: Dewey's Concept of "Experience" as Curriculum Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seaman, Jayson; Nelsen, Peter J.

2011-01-01

This article examines Dewey's concept of "experience" in light of his analysis of industrial capitalism, his anthropological thinking, and his critique of early 20th century educational ideologies, giving the concept a more expansive meaning than what is typically represented in the educational literature. We also outline the specific curricular…

Mapping Knowledge: Concept Maps in Early Childhood Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Birbili, Maria

2006-01-01

Graphic organizers such as webs, time lines, Venn diagrams, flowcharts, and concept maps are well known and widely used instructional and learning tools. They help teachers and students not only to identify and visually represent their views and knowledge but also to recognize and depict relationships among concepts. This article discusses the use…

On the universal structure of human lexical semantics

DOE PAGES

Youn, Hyejin; Sutton, Logan; Smith, Eric; ...

2016-02-01

How universal is human conceptual structure? The way concepts are organized in the human brain may reflect distinct features of cultural, historical, and environmental background in addition to properties universal to human cognition. Semantics, or meaning expressed through language, provides indirect access to the underlying conceptual structure, but meaning is notoriously difficult to measure, let alone parameterize. Here, we provide an empirical measure of semantic proximity between concepts using cross-linguistic dictionaries to translate words to and from languages carefully selected to be representative of worldwide diversity. These translations reveal cases where a particular language uses a single “polysemous” word tomore » express multiple concepts that another language represents using distinct words. We use the frequency of such polysemies linking two concepts as a measure of their semantic proximity and represent the pattern of these linkages by a weighted network. This network is highly structured: Certain concepts are far more prone to polysemy than others, and naturally interpretable clusters of closely related concepts emerge. Statistical analysis of the polysemies observed in a subset of the basic vocabulary shows that these structural properties are consistent across different language groups, and largely independent of geography, environment, and the presence or absence of a literary tradition. As a result, the methods developed here can be applied to any semantic domain to reveal the extent to which its conceptual structure is, similarly, a universal attribute of human cognition and language use.« less

A Bag of Concepts Approach for Biomedical Document Classification Using Wikipedia Knowledge.

PubMed

Mouriño-García, Marcos A; Pérez-Rodríguez, Roberto; Anido-Rifón, Luis E

2017-01-01

The ability to efficiently review the existing literature is essential for the rapid progress of research. This paper describes a classifier of text documents, represented as vectors in spaces of Wikipedia concepts, and analyses its suitability for classification of Spanish biomedical documents when only English documents are available for training. We propose the cross-language concept matching (CLCM) technique, which relies on Wikipedia interlanguage links to convert concept vectors from the Spanish to the English space. The performance of the classifier is compared to several baselines: a classifier based on machine translation, a classifier that represents documents after performing Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA), and a classifier that uses a domain-specific semantic an- notator (MetaMap). The corpus used for the experiments (Cross-Language UVigoMED) was purpose-built for this study, and it is composed of 12,832 English and 2,184 Spanish MEDLINE abstracts. The performance of our approach is superior to any other state-of-the art classifier in the benchmark, with performance increases up to: 124% over classical machine translation, 332% over MetaMap, and 60 times over the classifier based on ESA. The results have statistical significance, showing p-values < 0.0001. Using knowledge mined from Wikipedia to represent documents as vectors in a space of Wikipedia concepts and translating vectors between language-specific concept spaces, a cross-language classifier can be built, and it performs better than several state-of-the-art classifiers. Schattauer GmbH.

A Bag of Concepts Approach for Biomedical Document Classification Using Wikipedia Knowledge*. Spanish-English Cross-language Case Study.

PubMed

Mouriño-García, Marcos A; Pérez-Rodríguez, Roberto; Anido-Rifón, Luis E

2017-10-26

The ability to efficiently review the existing literature is essential for the rapid progress of research. This paper describes a classifier of text documents, represented as vectors in spaces of Wikipedia concepts, and analyses its suitability for classification of Spanish biomedical documents when only English documents are available for training. We propose the cross-language concept matching (CLCM) technique, which relies on Wikipedia interlanguage links to convert concept vectors from the Spanish to the English space. The performance of the classifier is compared to several baselines: a classifier based on machine translation, a classifier that represents documents after performing Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA), and a classifier that uses a domain-specific semantic annotator (MetaMap). The corpus used for the experiments (Cross-Language UVigoMED) was purpose-built for this study, and it is composed of 12,832 English and 2,184 Spanish MEDLINE abstracts. The performance of our approach is superior to any other state-of-the art classifier in the benchmark, with performance increases up to: 124% over classical machine translation, 332% over MetaMap, and 60 times over the classifier based on ESA. The results have statistical significance, showing p-values < 0.0001. Using knowledge mined from Wikipedia to represent documents as vectors in a space of Wikipedia concepts and translating vectors between language-specific concept spaces, a cross-language classifier can be built, and it performs better than several state-of-the-art classifiers.

On the universal structure of human lexical semantics

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Youn, Hyejin; Sutton, Logan; Smith, Eric

How universal is human conceptual structure? The way concepts are organized in the human brain may reflect distinct features of cultural, historical, and environmental background in addition to properties universal to human cognition. Semantics, or meaning expressed through language, provides indirect access to the underlying conceptual structure, but meaning is notoriously difficult to measure, let alone parameterize. Here, we provide an empirical measure of semantic proximity between concepts using cross-linguistic dictionaries to translate words to and from languages carefully selected to be representative of worldwide diversity. These translations reveal cases where a particular language uses a single “polysemous” word tomore » express multiple concepts that another language represents using distinct words. We use the frequency of such polysemies linking two concepts as a measure of their semantic proximity and represent the pattern of these linkages by a weighted network. This network is highly structured: Certain concepts are far more prone to polysemy than others, and naturally interpretable clusters of closely related concepts emerge. Statistical analysis of the polysemies observed in a subset of the basic vocabulary shows that these structural properties are consistent across different language groups, and largely independent of geography, environment, and the presence or absence of a literary tradition. As a result, the methods developed here can be applied to any semantic domain to reveal the extent to which its conceptual structure is, similarly, a universal attribute of human cognition and language use.« less

Integrating concepts and skills: Slope and kinematics graphs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tonelli, Edward P., Jr.

The concept of force is a foundational idea in physics. To predict the results of applying forces to objects, a student must be able to interpret data representing changes in distance, time, speed, and acceleration. Comprehension of kinematics concepts requires students to interpret motion graphs, where rates of change are represented as slopes of line segments. Studies have shown that majorities of students who show proficiency with mathematical concepts fail accurately to interpret motion graphs. The primary aim of this study was to examine how students apply their knowledge of slope when interpreting kinematics graphs. To answer the research questions a mixed methods research design, which included a survey and interviews, was adopted. Ninety eight (N=98) high school students completed surveys which were quantitatively analyzed along with qualitative information collected from interviews of students (N=15) and teachers ( N=2). The study showed that students who recalled methods for calculating slopes and speeds calculated slopes accurately, but calculated speeds inaccurately. When comparing the slopes and speeds, most students resorted to calculating instead of visual inspection. Most students recalled and applied memorized rules. Students who calculated slopes and speeds inaccurately failed to recall methods of calculating slopes and speeds, but when comparing speeds, these students connected the concepts of distance and time to the line segments and the rates of change they represented. This study's findings will likely help mathematics and science educators to better assist their students to apply their knowledge of the definition of slope and skills in kinematics concepts.

Light-Weighted Automatic Import of Standardized Ontologies into the Content Management System Drupal.

PubMed

Beger, Christoph; Uciteli, Alexandr; Herre, Heinrich

2017-01-01

The amount of ontologies, which are utilizable for widespread domains, is growing steadily. BioPortal alone, embraces over 500 published ontologies with nearly 8 million classes. In contrast, the vast informative content of these ontologies is only directly intelligible by experts. To overcome this deficiency it could be possible to represent ontologies as web portals, which does not require knowledge about ontologies and their semantics, but still carries as much information as possible to the end-user. Furthermore, the conception of a complex web portal is a sophisticated process. Many entities must be analyzed and linked to existing terminologies. Ontologies are a decent solution for gathering and storing this complex data and dependencies. Hence, automated imports of ontologies into web portals could support both mentioned scenarios. The Content Management System (CMS) Drupal 8 is one of many solutions to develop web presentations with less required knowledge about programming languages and it is suitable to represent ontological entities. We developed the Drupal Upper Ontology (DUO), which models concepts of Drupal's architecture, such as nodes, vocabularies and links. DUO can be imported into ontologies to map their entities to Drupal's concepts. Because of Drupal's lack of import capabilities, we implemented the Simple Ontology Loader in Drupal (SOLID), a Drupal 8 module, which allows Drupal administrators to import ontologies based on DUO. Our module generates content in Drupal from existing ontologies and makes it accessible by the general public. Moreover Drupal offers a tagging system which may be amplified with multiple standardized and established terminologies by importing them with SOLID. Our Drupal module shows that ontologies can be used to model content of a CMS and vice versa CMS are suitable to represent ontologies in a user-friendly way. Ontological entities are presented to the user as discrete pages with all appropriate properties, links and tags.

The Solar Probe mission - Mission design concepts and requirements

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ayon, Juan A.

1992-01-01

The Solar Probe concept as studied by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory represents the first mission to combine out-of-the-ecliptic scientific coverage with multiple, close solar encounters (at 4 solar radii). The scientific objectives of the mission have driven the investigation and analysis of several mission design concepts, all optimized to meet the science/mission requirements. This paper reviews those mission design concepts developed, the science objectives that drive the mission design, and the principle mission requirements associated with these various concepts.

Integration of nursing assessment concepts into the medical entities dictionary using the LOINC semantic structure as a terminology model.

PubMed

Cieslowski, B J; Wajngurt, D; Cimino, J J; Bakken, S

2001-01-01

Recent investigations have tested the applicability of various terminology models for the representing nursing concepts including those related to nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions, and standardized nursing assessments as a prerequisite for building a reference terminology that supports the nursing domain. We used the semantic structure of Clinical LOINC (Logical Observations, Identifiers, Names, and Codes) as a reference terminology model to support the integration of standardized assessment terms from two nursing terminologies into the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED), the concept-oriented, metadata dictionary at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Although the LOINC semantic structure was used previously to represent laboratory terms in the MED, selected hierarchies and semantic slots required revisions in order to incorporate the nursing assessment concepts. This project was an initial step in integrating nursing assessment concepts into the MED in a manner consistent with evolving standards for reference terminology models. Moreover, the revisions provide the foundation for adding other types of standardized assessments to the MED.

Integration of nursing assessment concepts into the medical entities dictionary using the LOINC semantic structure as a terminology model.

PubMed Central

Cieslowski, B. J.; Wajngurt, D.; Cimino, J. J.; Bakken, S.

2001-01-01

Recent investigations have tested the applicability of various terminology models for the representing nursing concepts including those related to nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions, and standardized nursing assessments as a prerequisite for building a reference terminology that supports the nursing domain. We used the semantic structure of Clinical LOINC (Logical Observations, Identifiers, Names, and Codes) as a reference terminology model to support the integration of standardized assessment terms from two nursing terminologies into the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED), the concept-oriented, metadata dictionary at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Although the LOINC semantic structure was used previously to represent laboratory terms in the MED, selected hierarchies and semantic slots required revisions in order to incorporate the nursing assessment concepts. This project was an initial step in integrating nursing assessment concepts into the MED in a manner consistent with evolving standards for reference terminology models. Moreover, the revisions provide the foundation for adding other types of standardized assessments to the MED. PMID:11825165

The Vector, Signal, and Image Processing Library (VSIPL): an Open Standard for Astronomical Data Processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kepner, J. V.; Janka, R. S.; Lebak, J.; Richards, M. A.

1999-12-01

The Vector/Signal/Image Processing Library (VSIPL) is a DARPA initiated effort made up of industry, government and academic representatives who have defined an industry standard API for vector, signal, and image processing primitives for real-time signal processing on high performance systems. VSIPL supports a wide range of data types (int, float, complex, ...) and layouts (vectors, matrices and tensors) and is ideal for astronomical data processing. The VSIPL API is intended to serve as an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard interface. The object-based VSIPL API abstracts the memory architecture of the underlying machine by using the concept of memory blocks and views. Early experiments with VSIPL code conversions have been carried out by the High Performance Computing Program team at the UCSD. Commercially, several major vendors of signal processors are actively developing implementations. VSIPL has also been explicitly required as part of a recent Rome Labs teraflop procurement. This poster presents the VSIPL API, its functionality and the status of various implementations.

Dual phase high-temperature membranes for CO2 separation - performance assessment in post- and pre-combustion processes.

PubMed

Anantharaman, Rahul; Peters, Thijs; Xing, Wen; Fontaine, Marie-Laure; Bredesen, Rune

2016-10-20

Dual phase membranes are highly CO 2 -selective membranes with an operating temperature above 400 °C. The focus of this work is to quantify the potential of dual phase membranes in pre- and post-combustion CO 2 capture processes. The process evaluations show that the dual phase membranes integrated with an NGCC power plant for CO 2 capture are not competitive with the MEA process for post-combustion capture. However, dual phase membrane concepts outperform the reference Selexol technology for pre-combustion CO 2 capture in an IGCC process. The two processes evaluated in this work, post-combustion NGCC and pre-combustion IGCC, represent extremes in CO 2 partial pressure fed to the separation unit. Based on the evaluations it is expected that dual phase membranes could be competitive for post-combustion capture from a pulverized coal fired power plant (PCC) and pre-combustion capture from an Integrated Reforming Cycle (IRCC).

Pathological anxiety in animals.

PubMed

Ohl, Frauke; Arndt, Saskia S; van der Staay, F Josef

2008-01-01

Selective breeding programmes in domestic and laboratory animals generally focus on physiological and/or anatomical characteristics. However, selection may have an (unintended) impact on other characteristics and may lead to dysfunctional behaviour that can affect biological functioning and, as a consequence, compromise welfare and quality of life. In this review it is proposed that various behavioural dysfunctions in animals are due to pathological anxiety. Although several approaches have been undertaken to specify the diagnostic criteria of pathological anxiety as a behavioural disorder in animals, the causal aetiology largely remains unknown. This is mainly due to the fact that integrated concepts, combining the behavioural syndrome and (neuro-) physiological processes, are widely lacking. Moreover, even the term anxiety itself represents a poorly defined concept or category. A definition is suggested and the potential causes of pathological anxiety are explored with a plea for developing adequate diagnostic tools and therapies to fight pathological anxiety in animals based on insight from scientific research.

Implantable brain computer interface: challenges to neurotechnology translation.

PubMed

Konrad, Peter; Shanks, Todd

2010-06-01

This article reviews three concepts related to implantable brain computer interface (BCI) devices being designed for human use: neural signal extraction primarily for motor commands, signal insertion to restore sensation, and technological challenges that remain. A significant body of literature has occurred over the past four decades regarding motor cortex signal extraction for upper extremity movement or computer interface. However, little is discussed regarding postural or ambulation command signaling. Auditory prosthesis research continues to represent the majority of literature on BCI signal insertion. Significant hurdles continue in the technological translation of BCI implants. These include developing a stable neural interface, significantly increasing signal processing capabilities, and methods of data transfer throughout the human body. The past few years, however, have provided extraordinary human examples of BCI implant potential. Despite technological hurdles, proof-of-concept animal and human studies provide significant encouragement that BCI implants may well find their way into mainstream medical practice in the foreseeable future.

Visual analysis of large heterogeneous social networks by semantic and structural abstraction.

PubMed

Shen, Zeqian; Ma, Kwan-Liu; Eliassi-Rad, Tina

2006-01-01

Social network analysis is an active area of study beyond sociology. It uncovers the invisible relationships between actors in a network and provides understanding of social processes and behaviors. It has become an important technique in a variety of application areas such as the Web, organizational studies, and homeland security. This paper presents a visual analytics tool, OntoVis, for understanding large, heterogeneous social networks, in which nodes and links could represent different concepts and relations, respectively. These concepts and relations are related through an ontology (also known as a schema). OntoVis is named such because it uses information in the ontology associated with a social network to semantically prune a large, heterogeneous network. In addition to semantic abstraction, OntoVis also allows users to do structural abstraction and importance filtering to make large networks manageable and to facilitate analytic reasoning. All these unique capabilities of OntoVis are illustrated with several case studies.

State of science: mental workload in ergonomics.

PubMed

Young, Mark S; Brookhuis, Karel A; Wickens, Christopher D; Hancock, Peter A

2015-01-01

Mental workload (MWL) is one of the most widely used concepts in ergonomics and human factors and represents a topic of increasing importance. Since modern technology in many working environments imposes ever more cognitive demands upon operators while physical demands diminish, understanding how MWL impinges on performance is increasingly critical. Yet, MWL is also one of the most nebulous concepts, with numerous definitions and dimensions associated with it. Moreover, MWL research has had a tendency to focus on complex, often safety-critical systems (e.g. transport, process control). Here we provide a general overview of the current state of affairs regarding the understanding, measurement and application of MWL in the design of complex systems over the last three decades. We conclude by discussing contemporary challenges for applied research, such as the interaction between cognitive workload and physical workload, and the quantification of workload 'redlines' which specify when operators are approaching or exceeding their performance tolerances.

Abortion: the antithesis of womanhood?

PubMed

Timpson, J

1996-04-01

The debate regarding the practice and role of abortion has been an enduring and problematic area of discourse within the nursing literature, with a tendency towards a polarized and inevitably simplistic analysis of what, for many practitioners, women and families, remains a highly complex and morally fraught concept. This paper attempts to explore the concept of abortion from within a feminist epistemology, to present a review of the literature as regards women's reproductive health and responsibilities, and thereby to contribute to the process of better understanding the role of abortion within contemporary health care practice. In order to facilitate the study it has been necessary to explore the wide spectrum of historical, philosophical, legal, moral and political imperatives pertaining to the meaning of abortion as represented within contemporary society, not only in relation to women and their reproductive health, but to feminism, women's well-being and self-determinism per se.

What should be our approach to understanding the universe?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, Hui-Yiing

2006-10-01

Besides understanding the concepts of physics and learning to apply them to different contexts, it is most crucial that students examine the basis of their beliefs in these theories. It becomes necessary, then, to expand our conception considerably beyond the scope of the physics textbook. This process is possibly effectuated by gaining a representative understanding of the liberal arts through study of several areas, and self-expression of one's convictions. Respecting of differences is important, as well as the expectation that proposing of new ideas is often accompanied by conflict and disequilibrium within individuals and the community. In this session, we will discuss the approaches of significant ancient scientists and philosophers to understanding the universe, and trace the development to modern conventionally accepted theories. A higher goal of physics education is to produce ``reforming physicists'' that unravel the truth for the betterment of society.

[Emotions and affect in psychoanalysisis].

PubMed

Carton, Solange; Widlöcher, Daniel

2012-06-01

The goal of this paper is to give some indications on the concept of affect in psychoanalysis. There is no single theory of affect, and Freud gave successive definitions, which continue to be deepened in contemporary psychoanalysis. We review some steps of Freud works on affect, then we look into some present major questions, such as its relationship to soma, the nature of unconscious affects and the repression of affect, which is particularly developed in the field of psychoanalytic psychosomatic. From Freud's definitions of affect as one of the drive representative and as a limit-concept between the somatic and the psychic, we develop some major theoretical perspectives, which give a central place to soma and drive impulses, and which agree on the major idea that affect is the result of a process. We then note some parallelism between psychoanalysis of affect and psychology and neurosciences of emotion, and underline the gaps and conditions of comparison between these different epistemological approaches.

Actively cooled plate fin sandwich structural panels for hypersonic aircraft

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Smith, L. M.; Beuyukian, C. S.

1979-01-01

An unshielded actively cooled structural panel was designed for application to a hypersonic aircraft. The design was an all aluminum stringer-stiffened platefin sandwich structure which used a 60/40 mixture of ethylene glycol/water as the coolant. Eight small test specimens of the basic platefin sandwich concept and three fatigue specimens from critical areas of the panel design was fabricated and tested (at room temperature). A test panel representative of all features of the panel design was fabricated and tested to determine the combined thermal/mechanical performance and structural integrity of the system. The overall findings are that; (1) the stringer-stiffened platefin sandwich actively cooling concept results in a low mass design that is an excellent contender for application to a hypersonic vehicle, and (2) the fabrication processes are state of the art but new or modified facilities are required to support full scale panel fabrication.

Artificial Diversity and Defense Security (ADDSec) Final Report.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Chavez, Adrian R.; Hamlet, Jason; Stout, William M.S.

Critical infrastructure systems continue to foster predictable communication patterns and static configurations over extended periods of time. The static nature of these systems eases the process of gathering reconnaissance information that can be used to design, develop, and launch attacks by adversaries. In this research effort, the early phases of an attack vector will be disrupted by randomizing application port numbers, IP addresses, and communication paths dynamically through the use of overlay networks within Industrial Control Systems (ICS). These protective measures convert static systems into "moving targets," adding an additional layer of defense. Additionally, we have developed a framework thatmore » automatically detects and defends against threats within these systems using an ensemble of machine learning algorithms that classify and categorize abnormal behavior. Our proof-of-concept has been demonstrated within a representative ICS environment. Performance metrics of our proof-of-concept have been captured with latency impacts of less than a millisecond, on average.« less

The dynamics of team cognition: A process-oriented theory of knowledge emergence in teams.

PubMed

Grand, James A; Braun, Michael T; Kuljanin, Goran; Kozlowski, Steve W J; Chao, Georgia T

2016-10-01

Team cognition has been identified as a critical component of team performance and decision-making. However, theory and research in this domain continues to remain largely static; articulation and examination of the dynamic processes through which collectively held knowledge emerges from the individual- to the team-level is lacking. To address this gap, we advance and systematically evaluate a process-oriented theory of team knowledge emergence. First, we summarize the core concepts and dynamic mechanisms that underlie team knowledge-building and represent our theory of team knowledge emergence (Step 1). We then translate this narrative theory into a formal computational model that provides an explicit specification of how these core concepts and mechanisms interact to produce emergent team knowledge (Step 2). The computational model is next instantiated into an agent-based simulation to explore how the key generative process mechanisms described in our theory contribute to improved knowledge emergence in teams (Step 3). Results from the simulations demonstrate that agent teams generate collectively shared knowledge more effectively when members are capable of processing information more efficiently and when teams follow communication strategies that promote equal rates of information sharing across members. Lastly, we conduct an empirical experiment with real teams participating in a collective knowledge-building task to verify that promoting these processes in human teams also leads to improved team knowledge emergence (Step 4). Discussion focuses on implications of the theory for examining team cognition processes and dynamics as well as directions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

GRAPES-Grounding representations in action, perception, and emotion systems: How object properties and categories are represented in the human brain.

PubMed

Martin, Alex

2016-08-01

In this article, I discuss some of the latest functional neuroimaging findings on the organization of object concepts in the human brain. I argue that these data provide strong support for viewing concepts as the products of highly interactive neural circuits grounded in the action, perception, and emotion systems. The nodes of these circuits are defined by regions representing specific object properties (e.g., form, color, and motion) and thus are property-specific, rather than strictly modality-specific. How these circuits are modified by external and internal environmental demands, the distinction between representational content and format, and the grounding of abstract social concepts are also discussed.

Phylogenetic Pattern, Evolutionary Processes and Species Delimitation in the Genus Echinococcus.

PubMed

Lymbery, A J

2017-01-01

An accurate and stable alpha taxonomy requires a clear conception of what constitutes a species and agreed criteria for delimiting different species. An evolutionary or general lineage concept defines a species as a single lineage of organisms with a common evolutionary trajectory, distinguishable from other such lineages. Delimiting evolutionary species is a two-step process. In the first step, phylogenetic reconstruction identifies putative species as groups of organisms that are monophyletic (share a common ancestor) and exclusive (more closely related to each other than to organisms outside the group). The second step is to assess whether members of the group possess genetic exchangeability (where cohesion is maintained by gene flow among populations) or ecological exchangeability (where cohesion is maintained because populations occupy the same ecological niche). Recent taxonomic reviews have recognized nine species within the genus Echinococcus. Phylogenetic reconstructions of the relationships between these putative species using mtDNA and nuclear gene sequences show that for the most part these nine species are monophyletic, although there are important incongruences that need to be resolved. Applying the criteria of genetic and ecological exchangeability suggests that seven of the currently recognized species represent evolutionarily distinct lineages. The species status of Echinococcus canadensis and Echinococcus ortleppi could not be confirmed. Coalescent-based analyses represent a promising approach to species delimitation in these closely related taxa. It seems likely, from a comparison of sister species groups, that speciation in the genus has been driven by geographic isolation, but biogeographic scenarios are largely speculative and require further testing. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Which resilience of the continental rainfall-runoff chain?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fraedrich, Klaus

2015-04-01

Processes along the continental rainfall-runoff chain are extremely variable over a wide range of time and space scales. A key societal question is the multiscale resilience of this chain. We argue that the adequate framework to tackle this question can be obtained by combining observations (ranging from minutes to decades) and minimalist concepts: (i) Rainfall exhibits 1/f-spectra if presented as binary events (tropics) and extrema world wide increase with duration according to Jennings' scaling law as simulated by a censored first-order autoregressive process representing vertical moisture fluxes. (ii) Runoff volatility (Yangtze) shows data collapse which, linked to an intra-annual 1/f-spectrum, is represented by a single function (Gumbel) not unlike physical systems at criticality, while short and long return times of extremes are Weibull-distributed. (iii) Soil moisture, interpreted by a biased coinflip Ansatz for rainfall events, provides an equation of state to the surface energy and water flux balances comprising Budyko's framework for quasi-stationary watershed analysis. (iv) Vegetation-greenness (NDVI), included as an active tracer extends Budyko's eco-hydrologic state space analysis, supplements the common geographical presentations, and it may be linked to a minimalist biodiversity concept. (v) Finally, attributions of change to external (or climate) and internal (or anthropogenic) causes are determined by eco-hydrologic state space trajectories using surface flux ratios of energy excess (loss by sensible heat over supply by net radiation) versus water excess (loss by discharge over gain by precipitation). Risk-estimates (by GCM-emulators) and possible policy advice mechanisms enter the outlook.

The hippocampus is an integral part of the temporal limbic system during emotional processing. Comment on "The quartet theory of human emotions: An integrative and neurofunctional model" by S. Koelsch et al.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trost, Wiebke; Frühholz, Sascha

2015-06-01

The proposed quartet theory of human emotions by Koelsch and colleagues [1] identifies four different affect systems to be involved in the processing of particular types of emotions. Moreover, the theory integrates both basic emotions and more complex emotion concepts, which include also aesthetic emotions such as musical emotions. The authors identify a particular brain system for each kind of emotion type, also by contrasting them to brain structures that are generally involved in emotion processing irrespective of the type of emotion. A brain system that has been less regarded in emotion theories, but which represents one of the four systems of the quartet to induce attachment related emotions, is the hippocampus.

Research into the influence of spatial variability and scale on the parameterization of hydrological processes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wood, Eric F.

1993-01-01

The objectives of the research were as follows: (1) Extend the Representative Elementary Area (RE) concept, first proposed and developed in Wood et al, (1988), to the water balance fluxes of the interstorm period (redistribution, evapotranspiration and baseflow) necessary for the analysis of long-term water balance processes. (2) Derive spatially averaged water balance model equations for spatially variable soil, topography and vegetation, over A RANGE OF CLIMATES. This is a necessary step in our goal to derive consistent hydrologic results up to GCM grid scales necessary for global climate modeling. (3) Apply the above macroscale water balance equations with remotely sensed data and begin to explore the feasibility of parameterizing the water balance constitutive equations at GCM grid scale.

Social Distance Evaluation in Human Parietal Cortex

PubMed Central

Yamakawa, Yoshinori; Kanai, Ryota; Matsumura, Michikazu; Naito, Eiichi

2009-01-01

Across cultures, social relationships are often thought of, described, and acted out in terms of physical space (e.g. “close friends” “high lord”). Does this cognitive mapping of social concepts arise from shared brain resources for processing social and physical relationships? Using fMRI, we found that the tasks of evaluating social compatibility and of evaluating physical distances engage a common brain substrate in the parietal cortex. The present study shows the possibility of an analytic brain mechanism to process and represent complex networks of social relationships. Given parietal cortex's known role in constructing egocentric maps of physical space, our present findings may help to explain the linguistic, psychological and behavioural links between social and physical space. PMID:19204791

Two dimensional recursive digital filters for near real time image processing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Olson, D.; Sherrod, E.

1980-01-01

A program was designed toward the demonstration of the feasibility of using two dimensional recursive digital filters for subjective image processing applications that require rapid turn around. The concept of the use of a dedicated minicomputer for the processor for this application was demonstrated. The minicomputer used was the HP1000 series E with a RTE 2 disc operating system and 32K words of memory. A Grinnel 256 x 512 x 8 bit display system was used to display the images. Sample images were provided by NASA Goddard on a 800 BPI, 9 track tape. Four 512 x 512 images representing 4 spectral regions of the same scene were provided. These images were filtered with enhancement filters developed during this effort.

“Scar-cinoma”: viewing the fibrotic lung mesenchymal cell in the context of cancer biology

PubMed Central

Horowitz, Jeffrey C.; Osterholzer, John J.; Marazioti, Antonia; Stathopoulos, Georgios T.

2017-01-01

Lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis are common, yet distinct, pathological processes that represent urgent unmet medical needs. Striking clinical and mechanistic parallels exist between these distinct disease entities. The goal of this article is to examine lung fibrosis from the perspective of cancer-associated phenotypic hallmarks, to discuss areas of mechanistic overlap and distinction, and to highlight profibrotic mechanisms that contribute to carcinogenesis. Ultimately, we speculate that such comparisons might identify opportunities to leverage our current understanding of the pathobiology of each disease process in order to advance novel therapeutic approaches for both. We anticipate that such “outside the box” concepts could be translated to a more precise and individualised approach to fibrotic diseases of the lung. PMID:27030681

Learning and feedback from the Danish patient safety incident reporting system can be improved.

PubMed

Moeller, Anders Damgaard; Rasmussen, Kurt; Nielsen, Kent Jacob

2016-06-01

The perceived usefulness of incident reporting systems is an important motivational factor for reporting. The usefulness may be facilitated by well-established feedback mechanisms and by learning processes. The aim of this study was to investigate how feedback mechanisms and learning processes were implemented at four Danish hospital units all located in one of the five Danish regions. Based on the concepts of feedback and learning from incident processes, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to 335 patient safety representatives from 200 departments at four Danish hospital units in one of the five Danish regions. The study showed that external reporters were rarely contacted for dialogue, grouped front-line staff were sparsely involved in the learning process, few evaluated the effectiveness of implemented interventions and personal factors were frequently perceived as a primary contributory factor to these incidents. In contrast, the patient safety representatives perceived their competencies as sufficient for the job, internal reporters were often contacted for dialogue, evaluation was widely used and management supported the work with incident reports. The results of the study identified several shortcomings in the implementation of learning processes and feedback mechanisms. The apparent existence of a person-focused approach stands out as an element of notice. The insufficient implementation we observed indicates that there is room for improvement in the efforts made to maximise learning from incidents in the investigated population. not relevant. not relevant.

Robust Inference of Genetic Exchange Communities from Microbial Genomes Using TF-IDF.

PubMed

Cong, Yingnan; Chan, Yao-Ban; Phillips, Charles A; Langston, Michael A; Ragan, Mark A

2017-01-01

Bacteria and archaea can exchange genetic material across lineages through processes of lateral genetic transfer (LGT). Collectively, these exchange relationships can be modeled as a network and analyzed using concepts from graph theory. In particular, densely connected regions within an LGT network have been defined as genetic exchange communities (GECs). However, it has been problematic to construct networks in which edges solely represent LGT. Here we apply term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), an alignment-free method originating from document analysis, to infer regions of lateral origin in bacterial genomes. We examine four empirical datasets of different size (number of genomes) and phyletic breadth, varying a key parameter (word length k ) within bounds established in previous work. We map the inferred lateral regions to genes in recipient genomes, and construct networks in which the nodes are groups of genomes, and the edges natively represent LGT. We then extract maximum and maximal cliques (i.e., GECs) from these graphs, and identify nodes that belong to GECs across a wide range of k . Most surviving lateral transfer has happened within these GECs. Using Gene Ontology enrichment tests we demonstrate that biological processes associated with metabolism, regulation and transport are often over-represented among the genes affected by LGT within these communities. These enrichments are largely robust to change of k .

Poroelastic Modeling as a Proof of Concept for Modular Representation of Coupled Geophysical Processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walker, R. L., II; Knepley, M.; Aminzadeh, F.

2017-12-01

We seek to use the tools provided by the Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation (PETSc) to represent a multiphysics problem in a form that decouples the element definition from the fully coupled equation through the use of pointwise functions that imitate the strong form of the governing equation. This allows allows individual physical processes to be expressed as independent kernels that may be then coupled with the existing finite element framework, PyLith, and capitalizes upon the flexibility offered by the solver, data management, and time stepping algorithms offered by PETSc. To demonstrate a characteristic example of coupled geophysical simulation devised in this manner, we present a model of a synthetic poroelastic environment, with and without the consideration of inertial effects, with fluid initially represented as a single phase. Matrix displacement and fluid pressure serve as the desired unknowns, with the option for various model parameters represented as dependent variables of the central unknowns. While independent of PyLith, this model also serves to showcase the adaptability of physics kernels for synthetic forward modeling. In addition, we seek to expand the base case to demonstrate the impact of modeling fluid as single phase compressible versus a single incompressible phase. As a goal, we also seek to include multiphase fluid modeling, as well as capillary effects.

The Neighborhood Auditing Tool: A Hybrid Interface for Auditing the UMLS

PubMed Central

Morrey, C. Paul; Geller, James; Halper, Michael; Perl, Yehoshua

2009-01-01

The UMLS’s integration of more than 100 source vocabularies, not necessarily consistent with one another, causes some inconsistencies. The purpose of auditing the UMLS is to detect such inconsistencies and to suggest how to resolve them while observing the requirement of fully representing the content of each source in the UMLS. A software tool, called the Neighborhood Auditing Tool (NAT), that facilitates UMLS auditing is presented. The NAT supports “neighborhood-based” auditing, where, at any given time, an auditor concentrates on a single focus concept and one of a variety of neighborhoods of its closely related concepts. Typical diagrammatic displays of concept networks have a number of shortcomings, so the NAT utilizes a hybrid diagram/text interface that features stylized neighborhood views which retain some of the best features of both the diagrammatic layouts and text windows while avoiding the shortcomings. The NAT allows an auditor to display knowledge from both the Metathesaurus (concept) level and the Semantic Network (semantic type) level. Various additional features of the NAT that support the auditing process are described. The usefulness of the NAT is demonstrated through a group of case studies. Its impact is tested with a study involving a select group of auditors. PMID:19475725

On the quirks of maximum parsimony and likelihood on phylogenetic networks.

PubMed

Bryant, Christopher; Fischer, Mareike; Linz, Simone; Semple, Charles

2017-03-21

Maximum parsimony is one of the most frequently-discussed tree reconstruction methods in phylogenetic estimation. However, in recent years it has become more and more apparent that phylogenetic trees are often not sufficient to describe evolution accurately. For instance, processes like hybridization or lateral gene transfer that are commonplace in many groups of organisms and result in mosaic patterns of relationships cannot be represented by a single phylogenetic tree. This is why phylogenetic networks, which can display such events, are becoming of more and more interest in phylogenetic research. It is therefore necessary to extend concepts like maximum parsimony from phylogenetic trees to networks. Several suggestions for possible extensions can be found in recent literature, for instance the softwired and the hardwired parsimony concepts. In this paper, we analyze the so-called big parsimony problem under these two concepts, i.e. we investigate maximum parsimonious networks and analyze their properties. In particular, we show that finding a softwired maximum parsimony network is possible in polynomial time. We also show that the set of maximum parsimony networks for the hardwired definition always contains at least one phylogenetic tree. Lastly, we investigate some parallels of parsimony to different likelihood concepts on phylogenetic networks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The current theoretical assumptions of the Bobath concept as determined by the members of BBTA.

PubMed

Raine, Sue

2007-01-01

The Bobath concept is a problem-solving approach to the assessment and treatment of individuals following a lesion of the central nervous system that offers therapists a framework for their clinical practice. The aim of this study was to facilitate a group of experts in determining the current theoretical assumptions underpinning the Bobath concept.A four-round Delphi study was used. The expert sample included all 15 members of the British Bobath Tutors Association. Initial statements were identified from the literature with respondents generating additional statements. Level of agreement was determined by using a five-point Likert scale. Level of consensus was set at 80%. Eighty-five statements were rated from the literature along with 115 generated by the group. Ninety-three statements were identified as representing the theoretical underpinning of the Bobath concept. The Bobath experts agreed that therapists need to be aware of the principles of motor learning such as active participation, opportunities for practice and meaningful goals. They emphasized that therapy is an interactive process between individual, therapist, and the environment and aims to promote efficiency of movement to the individual's maximum potential rather than normal movement. Treatment was identified by the experts as having "change of functional outcome" at its center.

Self Concept, Ability, and Achievement in a Sample of Sixth Grade Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stenner, A. Jackson; Katzenmeyer, William G.

1976-01-01

Assessments of self-concept are not merely a reflection of the pupil's objective appraisal of his own scholastic achievement, but represent another domain of useful information in explaining achievement differences. (MM)

REFractions: The Representing Equivalent Fractions Game

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tucker, Stephen I.

2014-01-01

Stephen Tucker presents a fractions game that addresses a range of fraction concepts including equivalence and computation. The REFractions game also improves students' fluency with representing, comparing and adding fractions.

Learning semantic histopathological representation for basal cell carcinoma classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gutiérrez, Ricardo; Rueda, Andrea; Romero, Eduardo

2013-03-01

Diagnosis of a histopathology glass slide is a complex process that involves accurate recognition of several structures, their function in the tissue and their relation with other structures. The way in which the pathologist represents the image content and the relations between those objects yields a better and accurate diagnoses. Therefore, an appropriate semantic representation of the image content will be useful in several analysis tasks such as cancer classification, tissue retrieval and histopahological image analysis, among others. Nevertheless, to automatically recognize those structures and extract their inner semantic meaning are still very challenging tasks. In this paper we introduce a new semantic representation that allows to describe histopathological concepts suitable for classification. The approach herein identify local concepts using a dictionary learning approach, i.e., the algorithm learns the most representative atoms from a set of random sampled patches, and then models the spatial relations among them by counting the co-occurrence between atoms, while penalizing the spatial distance. The proposed approach was compared with a bag-of-features representation in a tissue classification task. For this purpose, 240 histological microscopical fields of view, 24 per tissue class, were collected. Those images fed a Support Vector Machine classifier per class, using 120 images as train set and the remaining ones for testing, maintaining the same proportion of each concept in the train and test sets. The obtained classification results, averaged from 100 random partitions of training and test sets, shows that our approach is more sensitive in average than the bag-of-features representation in almost 6%.

Construction of the mathematical concept of pseudo thinking students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Anggraini, D.; Kusmayadi, T. A.; Pramudya, I.

2018-05-01

Thinking process is a process that begins with the acceptance of information, information processing and information calling in memory with structural changes that include concepts or knowledges. The concept or knowledge is individually constructed by each individual. While, students construct a mathematical concept, students may experience pseudo thinking. Pseudo thinking is a thinking process that results in an answer to a problem or construction to a concept “that is not true”. Pseudo thinking can be classified into two forms there are true pseudo and false pseudo. The construction of mathematical concepts in students of pseudo thinking should be immediately known because the error will have an impact on the next construction of mathematical concepts and to correct the errors it requires knowledge of the source of the error. Therefore, in this article will be discussed thinking process in constructing of mathematical concepts in students who experience pseudo thinking.

Advanced process control framework initiative

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hill, Tom; Nettles, Steve

1997-01-01

The semiconductor industry, one the world's most fiercely competitive industries, is driven by increasingly complex process technologies and global competition to improve cycle time, quality, and process flexibility. Due to the complexity of these problems, current process control techniques are generally nonautomated, time-consuming, reactive, nonadaptive, and focused on individual fabrication tools and processes. As the semiconductor industry moves into higher density processes, radical new approaches are required. To address the need for advanced factory-level process control in this environment, Honeywell, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and SEMATECH formed the Advanced Process Control Framework Initiative (APCFI) joint research project. The project defines and demonstrates an Advanced Process Control (APC) approach based on SEMATECH's Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) Framework. Its scope includes the coordination of Manufacturing Execution Systems, process control tools, and wafer fabrication equipment to provide necessary process control capabilities. Moreover, it takes advantage of the CIM Framework to integrate and coordinate applications from other suppliers that provide services necessary for the overall system to function. This presentation discusses the key concept of model-based process control that differentiates the APC Framework. This major improvement over current methods enables new systematic process control by linking the knowledge of key process settings to desired product characteristics that reside in models created with commercial model development tools The unique framework-based approach facilitates integration of commercial tools and reuse of their data by tying them together in an object-based structure. The presentation also explores the perspective of each organization's involvement in the APCFI project. Each has complementary goals and expertise to contribute; Honeywell represents the supplier viewpoint, AMD represents the user with 'real customer requirements', and SEMATECH provides a consensus-building organization that widely disseminates technology to suppliers and users in the semiconductor industry that face similar equipment and factory control systems challenges.

A similarity-based data warehousing environment for medical images.

PubMed

Teixeira, Jefferson William; Annibal, Luana Peixoto; Felipe, Joaquim Cezar; Ciferri, Ricardo Rodrigues; Ciferri, Cristina Dutra de Aguiar

2015-11-01

A core issue of the decision-making process in the medical field is to support the execution of analytical (OLAP) similarity queries over images in data warehousing environments. In this paper, we focus on this issue. We propose imageDWE, a non-conventional data warehousing environment that enables the storage of intrinsic features taken from medical images in a data warehouse and supports OLAP similarity queries over them. To comply with this goal, we introduce the concept of perceptual layer, which is an abstraction used to represent an image dataset according to a given feature descriptor in order to enable similarity search. Based on this concept, we propose the imageDW, an extended data warehouse with dimension tables specifically designed to support one or more perceptual layers. We also detail how to build an imageDW and how to load image data into it. Furthermore, we show how to process OLAP similarity queries composed of a conventional predicate and a similarity search predicate that encompasses the specification of one or more perceptual layers. Moreover, we introduce an index technique to improve the OLAP query processing over images. We carried out performance tests over a data warehouse environment that consolidated medical images from exams of several modalities. The results demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of our proposed imageDWE to manage images and to process OLAP similarity queries. The results also demonstrated that the use of the proposed index technique guaranteed a great improvement in query processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Using concept mapping in the knowledge-to-action process to compare stakeholder opinions on barriers to use of cancer screening among South Asians.

PubMed

Lobb, Rebecca; Pinto, Andrew D; Lofters, Aisha

2013-03-23

Using the knowledge-to-action (KTA) process, this study examined barriers to use of evidence-based interventions to improve early detection of cancer among South Asians from the perspective of multiple stakeholders. In 2011, we used concept mapping with South Asian residents, and representatives from health service and community service organizations in the region of Peel Ontario. As part of concept mapping procedures, brainstorming sessions were conducted with stakeholders (n = 53) to identify barriers to cancer screening among South Asians. Participants (n = 46) sorted barriers into groups, and rated barriers from lowest (1) to highest (6) in terms of importance for use of mammograms, Pap tests and fecal occult blood tests, and how feasible it would be to address them. Multi-dimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. A total of 45 unique barriers to use of mammograms, Pap tests, and fecal occult blood tests among South Asians were classified into seven clusters using concept mapping procedures: patient's beliefs, fears, lack of social support; health system; limited knowledge among residents; limited knowledge among physicians; health education programs; ethno-cultural discordance with the health system; and cost. Overall, the top three ranked clusters of barriers were 'limited knowledge among residents,' 'ethno-cultural discordance,' and 'health education programs' across surveys. Only residents ranked 'cost' second in importance for fecal occult blood testing, and stakeholders from health service organizations ranked 'limited knowledge among physicians' third for the feasibility survey. Stakeholders from health services organizations ranked 'limited knowledge among physicians' fourth for all other surveys, but this cluster consistently ranked lowest among residents. The limited reach of cancer control programs to racial and ethnic minority groups is a critical implementation issue that requires attention. Opinions of community service and health service organizations on why this deficit in implementation occurs are fundamental to understanding the solutions because these are the settings in which evidence-based interventions are implemented. Using concept mapping within a KTA process can facilitate the engagement of multiple stakeholders in the utilization of study results and in identifying next steps for action.

A knowledge representation approach using fuzzy cognitive maps for better navigation support in an adaptive learning system.

PubMed

Chrysafiadi, Konstantina; Virvou, Maria

2013-12-01

In this paper a knowledge representation approach of an adaptive and/or personalized tutoring system is presented. The domain knowledge should be represented in a more realistic way in order to allow the adaptive and/or personalized tutoring system to deliver the learning material to each individual learner dynamically taking into account her/his learning needs and her/his different learning pace. To succeed this, the domain knowledge representation has to depict the possible increase or decrease of the learner's knowledge. Considering that the domain concepts that constitute the learning material are not independent from each other, the knowledge representation approach has to allow the system to recognize either the domain concepts that are already partly or completely known for a learner, or the domain concepts that s/he has forgotten, taking into account the learner's knowledge level of the related concepts. In other words, the system should be informed about the knowledge dependencies that exist among the domain concepts of the learning material, as well as the strength on impact of each domain concept on others. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) seem to be an ideal way for representing graphically this kind of information. The suggested knowledge representation approach has been implemented in an e-learning adaptive system for teaching computer programming. The particular system was used by the students of a postgraduate program in the field of Informatics in the University of Piraeus and was compared with a corresponding system, in which the domain knowledge was represented using the most common used technique of network of concepts. The results of the evaluation were very encouraging.

Sequential Pattern Analysis: Method and Application in Exploring How Students Develop Concept Maps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiu, Chiung-Hui; Lin, Chien-Liang

2012-01-01

Concept mapping is a technique that represents knowledge in graphs. It has been widely adopted in science education and cognitive psychology to aid learning and assessment. To realize the sequential manner in which students develop concept maps, most research relies upon human-dependent, qualitative approaches. This article proposes a method for…

Adolescents' Conceptions of Democracy in Central/Eastern Europe and the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Avery, Patricia G.; Levy, Sara A.; Simmons, Annette M. M.; Scarlett, Michael H.

2012-01-01

The term democracy has an overwhelmingly positive connotation for most people (Diamond & Plattner, 2008), yet it is a contested, fluid, and evolving concept that represents many different things to different people. This article presents our analysis of conceptions of democracy among groups of adolescents (n = 2,848, ages 13-19) in the Czech…

Animated and Static Concept Maps Enhance Learning from Spoken Narration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adesope, Olusola O.; Nesbit, John C.

2013-01-01

An animated concept map represents verbal information in a node-link diagram that changes over time. The goals of the experiment were to evaluate the instructional effects of presenting an animated concept map concurrently with semantically equivalent spoken narration. The study used a 2 x 2 factorial design in which an animation factor (animated…

Putting Order into Our Universe: The Concept of "Blended Learning"--A Methodology within the Concept-Based Terminology Framework

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fernandes, Joana; Costa, Rute; Peres, Paula

2016-01-01

This paper aims at discussing the advantages of a methodology design grounded on a concept-based approach to Terminology applied to the most prominent scenario of current Higher Education: "blended learning." Terminology is a discipline that aims at representing, describing and defining specialized knowledge through language, putting…

Showing Automatically Generated Students' Conceptual Models to Students and Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perez-Marin, Diana; Pascual-Nieto, Ismael

2010-01-01

A student conceptual model can be defined as a set of interconnected concepts associated with an estimation value that indicates how well these concepts are used by the students. It can model just one student or a group of students, and can be represented as a concept map, conceptual diagram or one of several other knowledge representation…

Concept Mapping and Misconceptions: A Study of High-School Students' Understandings of Acids and Bases.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ross, Bertram; And Others

1991-01-01

An investigation of students understandings of acids and bases using concept maps, multiple-choice tests, and clinical interviews is described. The methodology and resulting analysis are illustrated with two abbreviated case studies selected from the study. Discussion of concept mapping points to how it starkly represents gaps in the understanding…

An Investigation of Concept Mapping to Improve the Reading Comprehension of Science Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oliver, Kevin

2009-01-01

This study investigated how well 74 6th-grade science students represented text structures from a 900-word textbook chapter on soil conservation, given a concept map template with four superordinate terms and 24 unsorted concepts. Findings suggest students were more successful at classifying pre-selected terms under given superordinate categories…

Integrating Concept Mapping into Information Systems Education for Meaningful Learning and Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wei, Wei; Yue, Kwok-Bun

2017-01-01

Concept map (CM) is a theoretically sound yet easy to learn tool and can be effectively used to represent knowledge. Even though many disciplines have adopted CM as a teaching and learning tool to improve learning effectiveness, its application in IS curriculum is sparse. Meaningful learning happens when one iteratively integrates new concepts and…

Knowledge representation in metabolic pathway databases.

PubMed

Stobbe, Miranda D; Jansen, Gerbert A; Moerland, Perry D; van Kampen, Antoine H C

2014-05-01

The accurate representation of all aspects of a metabolic network in a structured format, such that it can be used for a wide variety of computational analyses, is a challenge faced by a growing number of researchers. Analysis of five major metabolic pathway databases reveals that each database has made widely different choices to address this challenge, including how to deal with knowledge that is uncertain or missing. In concise overviews, we show how concepts such as compartments, enzymatic complexes and the direction of reactions are represented in each database. Importantly, also concepts which a database does not represent are described. Which aspects of the metabolic network need to be available in a structured format and to what detail differs per application. For example, for in silico phenotype prediction, a detailed representation of gene-protein-reaction relations and the compartmentalization of the network is essential. Our analysis also shows that current databases are still limited in capturing all details of the biology of the metabolic network, further illustrated with a detailed analysis of three metabolic processes. Finally, we conclude that the conceptual differences between the databases, which make knowledge exchange and integration a challenge, have not been resolved, so far, by the exchange formats in which knowledge representation is standardized.

Basic disturbances of information processing in psychosis prediction.

PubMed

Bodatsch, Mitja; Klosterkötter, Joachim; Müller, Ralf; Ruhrmann, Stephan

2013-01-01

The basic symptoms (BS) approach provides a valid instrument in predicting psychosis onset and represents moreover a significant heuristic framework for research. The term "basic symptoms" denotes subtle changes of cognition and perception in the earliest and prodromal stages of psychosis development. BS are thought to correspond to disturbances of neural information processing. Following the heuristic implications of the BS approach, the present paper aims at exploring disturbances of information processing, revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electro-encephalographic as characteristics of the at-risk state of psychosis. Furthermore, since high-risk studies employing ultra-high-risk criteria revealed non-conversion rates commonly exceeding 50%, thus warranting approaches that increase specificity, the potential contribution of neural information processing disturbances to psychosis prediction is reviewed. In summary, the at-risk state seems to be associated with information processing disturbances. Moreover, fMRI investigations suggested that disturbances of language processing domains might be a characteristic of the prodromal state. Neurophysiological studies revealed that disturbances of sensory processing may assist psychosis prediction in allowing for a quantification of risk in terms of magnitude and time. The latter finding represents a significant advancement since an estimation of the time to event has not yet been achieved by clinical approaches. Some evidence suggests a close relationship between self-experienced BS and neural information processing. With regard to future research, the relationship between neural information processing disturbances and different clinical risk concepts warrants further investigations. Thereby, a possible time sequence in the prodromal phase might be of particular interest.

Promoting Climate Literacy and Conceptual Understanding among In-service Secondary Science Teachers requires an Epistemological Perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhattacharya, D.; Forbes, C.; Roehrig, G.; Chandler, M. A.

2017-12-01

Promoting climate literacy among in-service science teachers necessitates an understanding of fundamental concepts about the Earth's climate System (USGCRP, 2009). Very few teachers report having any formal instruction in climate science (Plutzer et al., 2016), therefore, rather simple conceptions of climate systems and their variability exist, which has implications for students' science learning (Francies et al., 1993; Libarkin, 2005; Rebich, 2005). This study uses the inferences from a NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE) teacher professional development program (CYCLES) to establish the necessity for developing an epistemological perspective among teachers. In CYCLES, 19 middle and high school (male=8, female=11) teachers were assessed for their understanding of global climate change (GCC). A qualitative analysis of their concept maps and an alignment of their conceptions with the Essential Principles of Climate Literacy (NOAA, 2009) demonstrated that participants emphasized on EPCL 1, 3, 6, 7 focusing on the Earth system, atmospheric, social and ecological impacts of GCC. However, EPCL 4 (variability in climate) and 5 (data-based observations and modeling) were least represented and emphasized upon. Thus, participants' descriptions about global climatic patterns were often factual rather than incorporating causation (why the temperatures are increasing) and/or correlation (describing what other factors might influence global temperatures). Therefore, engaging with epistemic dimensions of climate science to understand the processes, tools, and norms through which climate scientists study the Earth's climate system (Huxter et al., 2013) is critical for developing an in-depth conceptual understanding of climate. CLiMES (Climate Modeling and Epistemology of Science), a NSF initiative proposes to use EzGCM (EzGlobal Climate Model) to engage students and teachers in designing and running simulations, performing data processing activities, and analyzing computational models to develop their own evidence-based claims about the Earth's climate system. We describe how epistemological investigations can be conducted using EzGCM to bring the scientific process and authentic climate science practice to middle and high school classrooms.

APOLLO IX - ART CONCEPTS - EXTRAVEHICULAR ACTIVITY (EVA)

NASA Image and Video Library

1969-02-06

S69-18546 (February 1969) --- North American Rockwell artist's concept illustrating the docking of the Lunar Module ascent stage with the Command and Service Modules during the Apollo 9 mission. The two figures in the Lunar Module represent astronauts James A. McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander; and Russell L. Schweickart, lunar module pilot. The figure in the Command Module represents astronaut David R. Scott, command module pilot. The Apollo 9 mission will evaluate spacecraft lunar module systems performance during manned Earth-orbital flight.

Project Design Concept for Monitoring and Control System

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

MCGREW, D.L.

2000-10-02

This Project Design Concept represents operational requirements established for use in design the tank farm Monitoring and Control System. These upgrades are included within the scope of Project W-314, Tank Farm Restoration and Safe Operations.

The fundamental units, processes and patterns of evolution, and the Tree of Life conundrum

PubMed Central

Koonin, Eugene V; Wolf, Yuri I

2009-01-01

Background The elucidation of the dominant role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in the evolution of prokaryotes led to a severe crisis of the Tree of Life (TOL) concept and intense debates on this subject. Concept Prompted by the crisis of the TOL, we attempt to define the primary units and the fundamental patterns and processes of evolution. We posit that replication of the genetic material is the singular fundamental biological process and that replication with an error rate below a certain threshold both enables and necessitates evolution by drift and selection. Starting from this proposition, we outline a general concept of evolution that consists of three major precepts. 1. The primary agency of evolution consists of Fundamental Units of Evolution (FUEs), that is, units of genetic material that possess a substantial degree of evolutionary independence. The FUEs include both bona fide selfish elements such as viruses, viroids, transposons, and plasmids, which encode some of the information required for their own replication, and regular genes that possess quasi-independence owing to their distinct selective value that provides for their transfer between ensembles of FUEs (genomes) and preferential replication along with the rest of the recipient genome. 2. The history of replication of a genetic element without recombination is isomorphously represented by a directed tree graph (an arborescence, in the graph theory language). Recombination within a FUE is common between very closely related sequences where homologous recombination is feasible but becomes negligible for longer evolutionary distances. In contrast, shuffling of FUEs occurs at all evolutionary distances. Thus, a tree is a natural representation of the evolution of an individual FUE on the macro scale, but not of an ensemble of FUEs such as a genome. 3. The history of life is properly represented by the "forest" of evolutionary trees for individual FUEs (Forest of Life, or FOL). Search for trends and patterns in the FOL is a productive direction of study that leads to the delineation of ensembles of FUEs that evolve coherently for a certain time span owing to a shared history of vertical inheritance or horizontal gene transfer; these ensembles are commonly known as genomes, taxa, or clades, depending on the level of analysis. A small set of genes (the universal genetic core of life) might show a (mostly) coherent evolutionary trend that transcends the entire history of cellular life forms. However, it might not be useful to denote this trend "the tree of life", or organismal, or species tree because neither organisms nor species are fundamental units of life. Conclusion A logical analysis of the units and processes of biological evolution suggests that the natural fundamental unit of evolution is a FUE, that is, a genetic element with an independent evolutionary history. Evolution of a FUE on the macro scale is naturally represented by a tree. Only the full compendium of trees for individual FUEs (the FOL) is an adequate depiction of the evolution of life. Coherent evolution of FUEs over extended evolutionary intervals is a crucial aspect of the history of life but a "species" or "organismal" tree is not a fundamental concept. Reviewers This articles was reviewed by Valerian Dolja, W. Ford Doolittle, Nicholas Galtier, and William Martin PMID:19788730

[The concept of love in a Spanish representative sample].

PubMed

Ferrer Pérez, Victoria A; Bosch Fiol, Esperanza; Navarro Guzmán, Capilla; Ramis Palmer, M Carmen; García Buades, Esther

2008-11-01

The model of romantic love and the acceptance of related myths have been granted wide relevance in our context. It has also been suggested that the concept of love can play a role in the origin and maintenance of gender violence. As an initial step towards researching this relationship, the objective of this article is to study the prevailing concept of love in the Spanish population, as well as to analyze any differences that gender and age may introduce in this conception. A reduced version of the Love Attitudes Scale was administered to a representative sample of 1,351 people. Results show that both men and women widely accept the love styles Eros, Agape, Storge and Pragma, reject the Ludus style, and are indifferent to the Mania style. However, the order of preference for love styles is different for men and women and for different age groups. These results are analyzed and discussed.

Annular Ion Engine Concept and Development Status

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Patterson, Michael J.

2016-01-01

The Annular Ion Engine (AIE) concept represents an evolutionary development in gridded ion thruster technology with the potential for delivering revolutionary capabilities. It has this potential because the AIE concept: (a) enables scaling of ion thruster technology to high power at specific impulse (Isp) values of interest for near-term mission applications, 5000 sec; and (b) it enables an increase in both thrust density and thrust-to-power (FP) ratio exceeding conventional ion thrusters and other electric propulsion (EP) technology options, thereby yielding the highest performance over a broad range in Isp. The AIE concept represents a natural progression of gridded ion thruster technology beyond the capabilities embodied by NASAs Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) [1]. The AIE would be appropriate for: (a) applications which require power levels exceeding NEXTs capabilities (up to about 14 kW [2]), with scalability potentially to 100s of kW; and/or (b) applications which require FP conditions exceeding NEXTs capabilities.

An Ontology Based Approach to Information Security

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pereira, Teresa; Santos, Henrique

The semantically structure of knowledge, based on ontology approaches have been increasingly adopted by several expertise from diverse domains. Recently ontologies have been moved from the philosophical and metaphysics disciplines to be used in the construction of models to describe a specific theory of a domain. The development and the use of ontologies promote the creation of a unique standard to represent concepts within a specific knowledge domain. In the scope of information security systems the use of an ontology to formalize and represent the concepts of security information challenge the mechanisms and techniques currently used. This paper intends to present a conceptual implementation model of an ontology defined in the security domain. The model presented contains the semantic concepts based on the information security standard ISO/IEC_JTC1, and their relationships to other concepts, defined in a subset of the information security domain.

Insights into mortality patterns and causes of death through a process point of view model.

PubMed

Anderson, James J; Li, Ting; Sharrow, David J

2017-02-01

Process point of view (POV) models of mortality, such as the Strehler-Mildvan and stochastic vitality models, represent death in terms of the loss of survival capacity through challenges and dissipation. Drawing on hallmarks of aging, we link these concepts to candidate biological mechanisms through a framework that defines death as challenges to vitality where distal factors defined the age-evolution of vitality and proximal factors define the probability distribution of challenges. To illustrate the process POV, we hypothesize that the immune system is a mortality nexus, characterized by two vitality streams: increasing vitality representing immune system development and immunosenescence representing vitality dissipation. Proximal challenges define three mortality partitions: juvenile and adult extrinsic mortalities and intrinsic adult mortality. Model parameters, generated from Swedish mortality data (1751-2010), exhibit biologically meaningful correspondences to economic, health and cause-of-death patterns. The model characterizes the twentieth century epidemiological transition mainly as a reduction in extrinsic mortality resulting from a shift from high magnitude disease challenges on individuals at all vitality levels to low magnitude stress challenges on low vitality individuals. Of secondary importance, intrinsic mortality was described by a gradual reduction in the rate of loss of vitality presumably resulting from reduction in the rate of immunosenescence. Extensions and limitations of a distal/proximal framework for characterizing more explicit causes of death, e.g. the young adult mortality hump or cancer in old age are discussed.

Insights into mortality patterns and causes of death through a process point of view model

PubMed Central

Anderson, James J.; Li, Ting; Sharrow, David J.

2016-01-01

Process point of view models of mortality, such as the Strehler-Mildvan and stochastic vitality models, represent death in terms of the loss of survival capacity through challenges and dissipation. Drawing on hallmarks of aging, we link these concepts to candidate biological mechanisms through a framework that defines death as challenges to vitality where distal factors defined the age-evolution of vitality and proximal factors define the probability distribution of challenges. To illustrate the process point of view, we hypothesize that the immune system is a mortality nexus, characterized by two vitality streams: increasing vitality representing immune system development and immunosenescence representing vitality dissipation. Proximal challenges define three mortality partitions: juvenile and adult extrinsic mortalities and intrinsic adult mortality. Model parameters, generated from Swedish mortality data (1751-2010), exhibit biologically meaningful correspondences to economic, health and cause-of-death patterns. The model characterizes the 20th century epidemiological transition mainly as a reduction in extrinsic mortality resulting from a shift from high magnitude disease challenges on individuals at all vitality levels to low magnitude stress challenges on low vitality individuals. Of secondary importance, intrinsic mortality was described by a gradual reduction in the rate of loss of vitality presumably resulting from reduction in the rate of immunosenescence. Extensions and limitations of a distal/proximal framework for characterizing more explicit causes of death, e.g. the young adult mortality hump or cancer in old age are discussed. PMID:27885527

The mental time travel continuum: on the architecture, capacity, versatility and extension of the mental bridge into the past and future.

PubMed

Breeden, Prescott; Dere, Dorothea; Zlomuzica, Armin; Dere, Ekrem

2016-06-01

Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to remember past events and to anticipate or imagine events in the future. MTT globally serves to optimize decision-making processes, improve problem-solving capabilities and prepare for future needs. MTT is also essential in providing our concept of self, which includes knowledge of our personality, our strengths and weaknesses, as well as our preferences and aversions. We will give an overview in which ways the capacity of animals to perform MTT is different from humans. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that MTT might represent a quantitative rather than qualitative entity with a continuum of MTT capacities in both humans and nonhuman animals. Given its high complexity, MTT requires a large processing capacity in order to integrate multimodal stimuli during the reconstruction of past and/or future events. We suggest that these operations depend on a highly specialized working memory subsystem, 'the MTT platform', which might represent a necessary additional component in the multi-component working memory model by Alan Baddeley.

The transfer function of neuron spike.

PubMed

Palmieri, Igor; Monteiro, Luiz H A; Miranda, Maria D

2015-08-01

The mathematical modeling of neuronal signals is a relevant problem in neuroscience. The complexity of the neuron behavior, however, makes this problem a particularly difficult task. Here, we propose a discrete-time linear time-invariant (LTI) model with a rational function in order to represent the neuronal spike detected by an electrode located in the surroundings of the nerve cell. The model is presented as a cascade association of two subsystems: one that generates an action potential from an input stimulus, and one that represents the medium between the cell and the electrode. The suggested approach employs system identification and signal processing concepts, and is dissociated from any considerations about the biophysical processes of the neuronal cell, providing a low-complexity alternative to model the neuronal spike. The model is validated by using in vivo experimental readings of intracellular and extracellular signals. A computational simulation of the model is presented in order to assess its proximity to the neuronal signal and to observe the variability of the estimated parameters. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of spike sorting. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Allostatic load and comorbidities: A mitochondrial, epigenetic, and evolutionary perspective.

PubMed

Juster, Robert-Paul; Russell, Jennifer J; Almeida, Daniel; Picard, Martin

2016-11-01

Stress-related pathophysiology drives comorbid trajectories that elude precise prediction. Allostatic load algorithms that quantify biological "wear and tear" represent a comprehensive approach to detect multisystemic disease processes of the mind and body. However, the multiple morbidities directly or indirectly related to stress physiology remain enigmatic. Our aim in this article is to propose that biological comorbidities represent discrete pathophysiological processes captured by measuring allostatic load. This has applications in research and clinical settings to predict physical and psychiatric comorbidities alike. The reader will be introduced to the concepts of allostasis, allostasic states, allostatic load, and allostatic overload as they relate to stress-related diseases and the proposed prediction of biological comorbidities that extend rather to understanding psychopathologies. In our transdisciplinary discussion, we will integrate perspectives related to (a) mitochondrial biology as a key player in the allostatic load time course toward diseases that "get under the skin and skull"; (b) epigenetics related to child maltreatment and biological embedding that shapes stress perception throughout lifespan development; and (c) evolutionary drivers of distinct personality profiles and biobehavioral patterns that are linked to dimensions of psychopathology.

Affective agnosia: Expansion of the alexithymia construct and a new opportunity to integrate and extend Freud's legacy.

PubMed

Lane, Richard D; Weihs, Karen L; Herring, Anne; Hishaw, Alex; Smith, Ryan

2015-08-01

We describe a new type of agnosia consisting of an impairment in the ability to mentally represent or know what one is feeling. Freud the neurologist coined the term "agnosia" in 1891 before creating psychoanalysis in 1895 but the term has not been previously applied to the domain of affective processing. We propose that the concept of "affective agnosia" advances the theory, measurement and treatment of what is now called "alexithymia," meaning "lack of words for emotion." We trace the origin of the alexithymia construct and discuss the strengths and limitations of extant research. We review evidence that the ability to represent and put emotions into words is a developmental achievement that strongly influences one's ability to experience, recognize, understand and use one's own emotional responses. We describe the neural substrates of emotional awareness and affective agnosia and compare and contrast these with related conditions. We then describe how this expansion of the conceptualization and measurement of affective processing deficits has important implications for basic emotion research and clinical practice. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A robotized six degree of freedom stage for optical microscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Avramov, M. Z.; Ivanov, I.; Pavlov, V.; Zaharieva, K.

2013-04-01

This work represents an investigation of the possibility to use a hexapod system for optical microscopy investigation and measurements. An appropriate hexapod stage has been developed. The stage has been calibrated and used for several different optical microscopy applications. The construction of the stage is based on the classic Stewart platform and thus represents a parallel robot with 6 degree of freedom. Appropriate software is controlling the transformation of the 3 position coordinates of the moving plate and the 3 Euler angles in position velocities and accelerations of the plate motion. An embedded microcontroller is implementing the motion plan and the PID controller regulating the kinematics. By difference to the available in the market hexapods the proposed solution is with lower precision but is significantly cheaper and simple to maintain. The repeatability obtained with current implementation is 0,05 mm and 0,001 rad. A specialized DSP based video processing engine is used for both feedback computation and application specific image processing in real-time. To verify the concept some applications has been developed for specific tasks and has been used for specific measurements.

The Formation of a Socioeconomic Health Disparity: The Case of Cocaine Use during the 1980s and 1990s*

PubMed Central

MIECH, RICHARD

2017-01-01

Despite the substantial and prolonged sociological interest in health disparities, much remains unknown about the processes that initiate them. To investigate this topic, we focus on the case study of cocaine use, for which a socioeconomic disparity emerged across all age groups in a short period of time around 1990. We examine whether the newly-formed disparity represents a selective remnant of previous users or, instead, a selective recruitment of new users. To evaluate these two potential processes we use latent class regression on a nationally representative cohort with repeated measures of past-year cocaine use before and after1990. Results support the “remnant” hypothesis and show that the newly-formed disparity resulted primarily because people in the lower social strata were less likely to have a trajectory of cocaine use with a sharp drop in use after 1990. These results point to the “remnant” concept as a way to bring together disparity analysis of very different and diverse health outcomes. PMID:18771068

Cryogenic Propellant Storage and Transfer Technology Demonstration: Prephase A Government Point-of-Departure Concept Study

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mulqueen, J. A.; Addona, B. M.; Gwaltney, D. A.; Holt, K. A.; Hopkins, R. C.; Matis, J. A.; McRight, P. S.; Popp, C. G.; Sutherlin, S. G.; Thomas, H. D.;

The body and the fading away of abstract concepts and words: a sign language analysis

PubMed Central

Borghi, Anna M.; Capirci, Olga; Gianfreda, Gabriele; Volterra, Virginia

2014-01-01

One of the most important challenges for embodied and grounded theories of cognition concerns the representation of abstract concepts, such as “freedom.” Many embodied theories of abstract concepts have been proposed. Some proposals stress the similarities between concrete and abstract concepts showing that they are both grounded in perception and action system while other emphasize their difference favoring a multiple representation view. An influential view proposes that abstract concepts are mapped to concrete ones through metaphors. Furthermore, some theories underline the fact that abstract concepts are grounded in specific contents, as situations, introspective states, emotions. These approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, since it is possible that they can account for different subsets of abstract concepts and words. One novel and fruitful way to understand the way in which abstract concepts are represented is to analyze how sign languages encode concepts into signs. In the present paper we will discuss these theoretical issues mostly relying on examples taken from Italian Sign Language (LIS, Lingua dei Segni Italiana), the visual-gestural language used within the Italian Deaf community. We will verify whether and to what extent LIS signs provide evidence favoring the different theories of abstract concepts. In analyzing signs we will distinguish between direct forms of involvement of the body and forms in which concepts are grounded differently, for example relying on linguistic experience. In dealing with the LIS evidence, we will consider the possibility that different abstract concepts are represented using different levels of embodiment. The collected evidence will help us to discuss whether a unitary embodied theory of abstract concepts is possible or whether the different theoretical proposals can account for different aspects of their representation. PMID:25120515

Automated UMLS-Based Comparison of Medical Forms

PubMed Central

Dugas, Martin; Fritz, Fleur; Krumm, Rainer; Breil, Bernhard

2013-01-01

Medical forms are very heterogeneous: on a European scale there are thousands of data items in several hundred different systems. To enable data exchange for clinical care and research purposes there is a need to develop interoperable documentation systems with harmonized forms for data capture. A prerequisite in this harmonization process is comparison of forms. So far – to our knowledge – an automated method for comparison of medical forms is not available. A form contains a list of data items with corresponding medical concepts. An automatic comparison needs data types, item names and especially item with these unique concept codes from medical terminologies. The scope of the proposed method is a comparison of these items by comparing their concept codes (coded in UMLS). Each data item is represented by item name, concept code and value domain. Two items are called identical, if item name, concept code and value domain are the same. Two items are called matching, if only concept code and value domain are the same. Two items are called similar, if their concept codes are the same, but the value domains are different. Based on these definitions an open-source implementation for automated comparison of medical forms in ODM format with UMLS-based semantic annotations was developed. It is available as package compareODM from http://cran.r-project.org. To evaluate this method, it was applied to a set of 7 real medical forms with 285 data items from a large public ODM repository with forms for different medical purposes (research, quality management, routine care). Comparison results were visualized with grid images and dendrograms. Automated comparison of semantically annotated medical forms is feasible. Dendrograms allow a view on clustered similar forms. The approach is scalable for a large set of real medical forms. PMID:23861827

A concept mapping study on organic food consumers in Shanghai, China.

PubMed

Hasimu, Huliyeti; Marchesini, Sergio; Canavari, Maurizio

2017-01-01

Despite some similarities with developed countries, the growth of organic market in China seems to follow a different path. Thus, important questions are how Chinese urban consumers perceive organic food, and what are the main concepts associated to the organic attribute. We aimed at representing in graphic form the network of mental associations with the organic concept. We used an adapted version of the "Brand concept mapping" method to acquire, process, and draw individual concept networks perceived by 50 organic food consumers in Shanghai. We then analyzed the data using network and cluster analysis to create aggregated maps for two distinct groups of consumers. Similarly to their peers in developed countries, Chinese consumers perceive organic food as healthy, safe and expensive. However, organic is not necessarily synonymous with natural produce in China, also due to a translation of the term that conveys the idea of a "technology advanced" product. Organic overlaps with the green food label in terms of image and positioning in the market, since they are easily associated and often confused. The two groups we identified show clear differences in the way the organic concept is associated to other concepts and features. The study provides useful information for practitioners: marketers of organic products in China should invest in communication to emphasize the differences with Green Food products and they should consider the possibility of segmenting organic consumers; Chinese policy makers should consider implementing information campaigns aimed at achieving a better understanding of the features of these quality labels among consumers. For researchers, the study confirms that the BCM method is effective and its integration with network and cluster analysis improves the interpretation of individual and aggregated maps. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Lay and medical conceptions of headache and migraine : Investigation of members of blue collar and service professions].

PubMed

Dreßke, S

2016-08-01

Every professional segment has its own typical forms of stress, which for members result in patterns of bodily conception and interpretation of pain. The way individuals cope with these typical forms of pain reflects their social identity, social status and group membership. In this study pain was investigated from a sociological perspective as a medium contributing to socialization processes in stress collectives. Cultural conceptions of headache and migraine were investigated in members of blue collar occupations, in service professions and patients in specialized medical pain care. In this study 49 qualitative biographical interviews were conducted with patients suffering from headache and migraine. The study population included persons from the general outpatient population and patients recruited from specialized inpatient pain clinics. Members of blue collar occupations with specific body-oriented, mechanical stress patterns and dominant masculine attitudes, perceived headache and migraine as atypical deviations, which are contextualized as body pain. Professionals in the service sector with specific communicative-emotional work patterns perceived headache and migraine as typical and accepted deviations. Both pain conceptions represent dominant body norms and social commitments in each group; however, in specialized pain care these everyday concepts are transformed by increasing expert knowledge resulting in medicalized life styles and in identity conceptions conforming to the medical imperative. The success of specialized treatment of headache depends to a certain extent on the ability of patients to impose a medically regulated life style on their significant others; however, this can conflict with the demands of everyday life.

Computing biological functions using BioΨ, a formal description of biological processes based on elementary bricks of actions

PubMed Central

Pérès, Sabine; Felicori, Liza; Rialle, Stéphanie; Jobard, Elodie; Molina, Franck

2010-01-01

Motivation: In the available databases, biological processes are described from molecular and cellular points of view, but these descriptions are represented with text annotations that make it difficult to handle them for computation. Consequently, there is an obvious need for formal descriptions of biological processes. Results: We present a formalism that uses the BioΨ concepts to model biological processes from molecular details to networks. This computational approach, based on elementary bricks of actions, allows us to calculate on biological functions (e.g. process comparison, mapping structure–function relationships, etc.). We illustrate its application with two examples: the functional comparison of proteases and the functional description of the glycolysis network. This computational approach is compatible with detailed biological knowledge and can be applied to different kinds of systems of simulation. Availability: www.sysdiag.cnrs.fr/publications/supplementary-materials/BioPsi_Manager/ Contact: sabine.peres@sysdiag.cnrs.fr; franck.molina@sysdiag.cnrs.fr Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:20448138

Mercury removal from water streams through the ion exchange membrane bioreactor concept.

PubMed

Oehmen, Adrian; Vergel, Dario; Fradinho, Joana; Reis, Maria A M; Crespo, João G; Velizarov, Svetlozar

2014-01-15

Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal that causes human health problems and environmental contamination. In this study, an ion exchange membrane bioreactor (IEMB) process was developed to achieve Hg(II) removal from drinking water and industrial effluents. Hg(II) transport through a cation exchange membrane was coupled with its bioreduction to Hg(0) in order to achieve Hg removal from concentrated streams, with minimal production of contaminated by-products observed. This study involves (1) membrane selection, (2) demonstration of process effectiveness for removing Hg from drinking water to below the 1ppb recommended limit, and (3) process application for treatment of concentrated water streams, where >98% of the Hg was removed, and the throughput of contaminated water was optimised through membrane pre-treatment. The IEMB process represents a novel mercury treatment technology with minimal generation of contaminated waste, thereby reducing the overall environmental impact of the process. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The experience factory: Can it make you a 5? or what is its relationship to other quality and improvement concepts?

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Basili, Victor R.

1992-01-01

The concepts of quality improvements have permeated many businesses. It is clear that the nineties will be the quality era for software and there is a growing need to develop or adapt quality improvement approaches to the software business. Thus we must understand software as an artifact and software as a business. Since the business we are dealing with is software, we must understand the nature of software and software development. The software discipline is evolutionary and experimental; it is a laboratory science. Software is development not production. The technologies of the discipline are human based. There is a lack of models that allow us to reason about the process and the product. All software is not the same; process is a variable, goals are variable, etc. Packaged, reusable, experiences require additional resources in the form of organization, processes, people, etc. There have been a variety of organizational frameworks proposed to improve quality for various businesses. The ones discussed in this presentation include: Plan-Do-Check-Act, a quality improvement process based upon a feedback cycle for optimizing a single process model/production line; the Experience Factory/Quality Improvement Paradigm, continuous improvements through the experimentation, packaging, and reuse of experiences based upon a business's needs; Total Quality Management, a management approach to long term success through customer satisfaction based on the participation of all members of an organization; the SEI capability maturity model, a staged process improvement based upon assessment with regard to a set of key process areas until you reach a level 5 which represents a continuous process improvement; and Lean (software) Development, a principle supporting the concentration of the production on 'value added' activities and the elimination of reduction of 'not value added' activities.

The trans-species core SELF: the emergence of active cultural and neuro-ecological agents through self-related processing within subcortical-cortical midline networks.

PubMed

Panksepp, Jaak; Northoff, Georg

2009-03-01

The nature of "the self" has been one of the central problems in philosophy and more recently in neuroscience. This raises various questions: (i) Can we attribute a self to animals? (ii) Do animals and humans share certain aspects of their core selves, yielding a trans-species concept of self? (iii) What are the neural processes that underlie a possible trans-species concept of self? (iv) What are the developmental aspects and do they result in various levels of self-representation? Drawing on recent literature from both human and animal research, we suggest a trans-species concept of self that is based upon what has been called a "core-self" which can be described by self-related processing (SRP) as a specific mode of interaction between organism and environment. When we refer to specific neural networks, we will here refer to the underlying system as the "core-SELF." The core-SELF provides primordial neural coordinates that represent organisms as living creatures-at the lowest level this elaborates interoceptive states along with raw emotional feelings (i.e., the intentions in action of a primordial core-SELF) while higher medial cortical levels facilitate affective-cognitive integration (yielding a fully-developed nomothetic core-self). Developmentally, SRP allows stimuli from the environment to be related and linked to organismic needs, signaled and processed within core-self structures within subcorical-cortical midline structures (SCMS) that provide the foundation for epigenetic emergence of ecologically framed, higher idiographic forms of selfhood across different individuals within a species. These functions ultimately operate as a coordinated network. We postulate that core SRP operates automatically, is deeply affective, and is developmentally and epigenetically connected to sensory-motor and higher cognitive abilities. This core-self is mediated by SCMS, embedded in visceral and instinctual representations of the body that are well integrated with basic attentional, emotional and motivational functions that are apparently shared between humans, non-human mammals, and perhaps in a proto-SELF form, other vertebrates. Such a trans-species concept of organismic coherence is thoroughly biological and affective at the lowest levels of a complex neural network, and culturally and ecologically molded at higher levels of neural processing. It allows organisms to selectively adapt to and integrate with physical and social environments. Such a psychobiologically universal, but environmentally diversified, concept may promote novel trans-species studies of the core-self across mammalian species.

Concepts and Technologies for a Comprehensive Information System for Historical Research and Heritage Documentation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Henze, F.; Magdalinski, N.; Schwarzbach, F.; Schulze, A.; Gerth, Ph.; Schäfer, F.

2013-07-01

Information systems play an important role in historical research as well as in heritage documentation. As part of a joint research project of the German Archaeological Institute, the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus and the Dresden University of Applied Sciences a web-based documentation system is currently being developed, which can easily be adapted to the needs of different projects with individual scientific concepts, methods and questions. Based on open source and standardized technologies it will focus on open and well-documented interfaces to ease the dissemination and re-use of its content via web-services and to communicate with desktop applications for further evaluation and analysis. Core of the system is a generic data model that represents a wide range of topics and methods of archaeological work. By the provision of a concerted amount of initial themes and attributes a cross project analysis of research data will be possible. The development of enhanced search and retrieval functionalities will simplify the processing and handling of large heterogeneous data sets. To achieve a high degree of interoperability with existing external data, systems and applications, standardized interfaces will be integrated. The analysis of spatial data shall be possible through the integration of web-based GIS functions. As an extension to this, customized functions for storage, processing and provision of 3D geo data are being developed. As part of the contribution system requirements and concepts will be presented and discussed. A particular focus will be on introducing the generic data model and the derived database schema. The research work on enhanced search and retrieval capabilities will be illustrated by prototypical developments, as well as concepts and first implementations for an integrated 2D/3D Web-GIS.

Online maternity information seeking among lesbian, bisexual, and queer women.

PubMed

Ruppel, Emily H; Karpman, Hannah E; Delk, Carolyn E; Merryman, Mallory

2017-05-01

recent research has concluded that barriers to maternity health care exist for lesbian, bisexual, and queer women. This mixed methods study aims to understand patterns in seeking and sharing online health information for LBQ women attempting conception. researchers performed a qualitative content analysis of 400 discussions in lesbian-oriented Facebook groups, containing 1764 total instances of text. 400 discussions from heterosexual-oriented conception and parenting Facebook groups were examined for comparison purposes, though they will not be the focus of this analysis. This paper also presents descriptive statistics on posts observed. posts were drawn from a representative sample of lesbian-oriented conception, pregnancy, and parenting Facebook groups. Posts examined for comparison purposes were drawn from groups that appeared to primarily serve heterosexual women. many participants in lesbian-oriented Facebook groups sought and provided medical information. Their queries focused on the insemination process, and frequently related to posters' specific situations, while heterosexual women tended to seek general advice about the conception and pregnancy process. The accuracy of the content of responses varied, and group members seemed to view the prevalence of contradictory information as positive evidence of diverse perspectives. Even when information was technically correct, posters did not always apply it properly to the question at hand. barriers to maternity care, or a lack of education and initiative among primary care providers, may drive lesbian, bisexual, and queer women to seek health information from peers on the Internet when trying to become pregnant. These exchanges may contribute to misinformation, which may negatively affect lesbian, bisexual, and queer women's fertility outcomes and overall health. clinicians should be conscious of online health information seeking as both a symptom of and cause of sexuality-based disparities. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Galactic Hearts of Glass Artist Concept

NASA Image and Video Library

2006-02-15

This artist concept based on data fromNASA Spitzer Space Telescope shows delicate greenish crystals sprinkled throughout the violent core of a pair of colliding galaxies. The white spots represent a thriving population of stars of all sizes and ages.

Prerequisites of realization of total breast reconstruction concept in Tomsk region

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dudnikov, A.; Smirnov, N.; Belozertseva, A.; Baitinger, A.; Kudyakov, L.

2015-11-01

The recent research represents the attempt of economical evaluation of the Total Breast Reconstruction concept (TBR), which was formulated in «Scientific and Research Institute of Microsurgery», in 2014. This concept includes anatomical and functional breast reconstruction, afferential reinnervation, sensitivity recovery and the creation of a new erogenous zone in the reconstructed breast. The created clinical-economical model allows for the evaluation of the efficacy and benefits of using the TBR concept. The benefits of using TBR concept for Tomsk Region also were evaluated.

Knowledge Repository for Fmea Related Knowledge

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cândea, Gabriela Simona; Kifor, Claudiu Vasile; Cândea, Ciprian

2014-11-01

This paper presents innovative usage of knowledge system into Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) process using the ontology to represent the knowledge. Knowledge system is built to serve multi-projects work that nowadays are in place in any manufacturing or services provider, and knowledge must be retained and reused at the company level and not only at project level. The system is following the FMEA methodology and the validation of the concept is compliant with the automotive industry standards published by Automotive Industry Action Group, and not only. Collaboration is assured trough web-based GUI that supports multiple users access at any time

Apollo experience report: Communications system flight evaluation and verification

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Travis, D.; Royston, C. L., Jr.

1972-01-01

Flight tests of the synergetic operation of the spacecraft and earth based communications equipment were accomplished during Apollo missions AS-202 through Apollo 12. The primary goals of these tests were to verify that the communications system would adequately support lunar landing missions and to establish the inflight communications system performance characteristics. To attain these goals, a communications system flight verification and evaluation team was established. The concept of the team operations, the evolution of the evaluation processes, synopses of the team activities associated with each mission, and major conclusions and recommendations resulting from the performance evaluation are represented.

The semantic richness of abstract concepts

PubMed Central

Recchia, Gabriel; Jones, Michael N.

2012-01-01

We contrasted the predictive power of three measures of semantic richness—number of features (NFs), contextual dispersion (CD), and a novel measure of number of semantic neighbors (NSN)—for a large set of concrete and abstract concepts on lexical decision and naming tasks. NSN (but not NF) facilitated processing for abstract concepts, while NF (but not NSN) facilitated processing for the most concrete concepts, consistent with claims that linguistic information is more relevant for abstract concepts in early processing. Additionally, converging evidence from two datasets suggests that when NSN and CD are controlled for, the features that most facilitate processing are those associated with a concept's physical characteristics and real-world contexts. These results suggest that rich linguistic contexts (many semantic neighbors) facilitate early activation of abstract concepts, whereas concrete concepts benefit more from rich physical contexts (many associated objects and locations). PMID:23205008

GRAPES—Grounding representations in action, perception, and emotion systems: How object properties and categories are represented in the human brain

PubMed Central

Martin, Alex

2016-01-01

In this article, I discuss some of the latest functional neuroimaging findings on the organization of object concepts in the human brain. I argue that these data provide strong support for viewing concepts as the products of highly interactive neural circuits grounded in the action, perception, and emotion systems. The nodes of these circuits are defined by regions representing specific object properties (e.g., form, color, and motion) and thus are property-specific, rather than strictly modality-specific. How these circuits are modified by external and internal environmental demands, the distinction between representational content and format, and the grounding of abstract social concepts are also discussed. PMID:25968087

A Semantic Approach for Knowledge Discovery to Help Mitigate Habitat Loss in the Gulf of Mexico

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ramachandran, R.; Maskey, M.; Graves, S.; Hardin, D.

2008-12-01

Noesis is a meta-search engine and a resource aggregator that uses domain ontologies to provide scoped search capabilities. Ontologies enable Noesis to help users refine their searches for information on the open web and in hidden web locations such as data catalogues with standardized, but discipline specific vocabularies. Through its ontologies Noesis provides a guided refinement of search queries which produces complete and accurate searches while reducing the user's burden to experiment with different search strings. All search results are organized by categories (e. g. all results from Google are grouped together) which may be selected or omitted according to the desire of the user. During the past two years ontologies were developed for sea grasses in the Gulf of Mexico and were used to support a habitat restoration demonstration project. Currently these ontologies are being augmented to address the special characteristics of mangroves. These new ontologies will extend the demonstration project to broader regions of the Gulf including protected mangrove locations in coastal Mexico. Noesis contributes to the decision making process by producing a comprehensive list of relevant resources based on the semantic information contained in the ontologies. Ontologies are organized in a tree like taxonomies, where the child nodes represent the Specializations and the parent nodes represent the Generalizations of a node or concept. Specializations can be used to provide more detailed search, while generalizations are used to make the search broader. Ontologies are also used to link two syntactically different terms to one semantic concept (synonyms). Appending a synonym to the query expands the search, thus providing better search coverage. Every concept has a set of properties that are neither in the same inheritance hierarchy (Specializations / Generalizations) nor equivalent (synonyms). These are called Related Concepts and they are captured in the ontology through property relationships. By using Related Concepts users can search for resources with respect to a particular property. Noesis automatically generates searches that include all of these capabilities, removing the burden from the user and producing broader and more accurate search results. This presentation will demonstrate the features of Noesis and describe its application to habitat studies in the Gulf of Mexico.

Universals and Specifics of Math Self-Concept, Math Self-Efficacy, and Math Anxiety across 41 PISA 2003 Participating Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jihyun

2009-01-01

The overarching goal of the present study is to investigate the factorial structure of three closely related constructs: math self-concept, math self-efficacy, and math anxiety. The factorial structure consisting of three factors, each representing math self-concept, math self-efficacy, and math anxiety, is supported in all 41 countries employed…

Automatic Concept-Based Query Expansion Using Term Relational Pathways Built from a Collection-Specific Association Thesaurus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lyall-Wilson, Jennifer Rae

2013-01-01

The dissertation research explores an approach to automatic concept-based query expansion to improve search engine performance. It uses a network-based approach for identifying the concept represented by the user's query and is founded on the idea that a collection-specific association thesaurus can be used to create a reasonable representation of…

The Nexus between Science Literacy & Technical Literacy: A State by State Analysis of Engineering Content in State Science Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koehler, Catherine M.; Faraclas, Elias; Giblin, David; Moss, David M.; Kazerounian, Kazem

2013-01-01

This study explores how engineering concepts are represented in secondary science standards across the nation by examining how engineering and technical concepts are infused into these frameworks. Secondary science standards from 49 states plus the District of Columbia were analyzed and ranked based on how many engineering concepts were found.…

Didactic Model--Bridging a Concept with Phenomena

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shternberg, Beba; Yerushalmy, Michal

2004-01-01

The article focuses on a specific method of constructing the concept of function. The core of this method is a didactic model that plays two roles together--on the one hand a role of a model of the concept of function and on the other hand a role of a model of physical phenomena that functions can represent. This synergy of modeling situations and…

The Use of the Dialogue Concepts from the Arsenal of the Norwegian Dialogue Pedagogy in the Time of Postmodernism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gradovski, Mikhail

2012-01-01

Inspired by the views by the American educationalist Henry Giroux on the role teachers and educationalists should be playing in the time of postmodernism and by Abraham Maslow's concept of biological idiosyncrasy, the author discusses how the concepts of the dialogues created by the representatives of Norwegian Dialogue Pedagogy, Hans Skjervheim,…

Potential Cislunar and Interplanetary Proving Ground Excursion Trajectory Concepts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McGuire, Melissa L.; Strange, Nathan J.; Burke, Laura M.; MacDonald, Mark A.; McElrath, Timothy P.; Landau, Damon F.; Lantoine, Gregory; Hack, Kurt J.; Lopez, Pedro

2016-01-01

NASA has been investigating potential translunar excursion concepts to take place in the 2020s that would be used to test and demonstrate long duration life support and other systems needed for eventual Mars missions in the 2030s. These potential trajectory concepts could be conducted in the proving ground, a region of cislunar and near-Earth interplanetary space where international space agencies could cooperate to develop the technologies needed for interplanetary spaceflight. Enabled by high power Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) technologies, the excursion trajectory concepts studied are grouped into three classes of increasing distance from the Earth and increasing technical difficulty: the first class of excursion trajectory concepts would represent a 90-120 day round trip trajectory with abort to Earth options throughout the entire length, the second class would be a 180-210 day round trip trajectory with periods in which aborts would not be available, and the third would be a 300-400 day round trip trajectory without aborts for most of the length of the trip. This paper provides a top-level summary of the trajectory and mission design of representative example missions of these three classes of excursion trajectory concepts.

The concept and science process skills analysis in bomb calorimeter experiment as a foundation for the development of virtual laboratory of bomb calorimeter

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kurniati, D. R.; Rohman, I.

2018-05-01

This study aims to analyze the concepts and science process skills in bomb calorimeter experiment as a basis for developing the virtual laboratory of bomb calorimeter. This study employed research and development method (R&D) to gain the answer to the proposed problems. This paper discussed the concepts and process skills analysis. The essential concepts and process skills associated with bomb calorimeter are analyze by optimizing the bomb calorimeter experiment. The concepts analysis found seven fundamental concepts to be concerned in developing the virtual laboratory that are internal energy, burning heat, perfect combustion, incomplete combustion, calorimeter constant, bomb calorimeter, and Black principle. Since the concept of bomb calorimeter, perfect and incomplete combustion created to figure out the real situation and contain controllable variables, in virtual the concepts displayed in the form of simulation. Meanwhile, the last four concepts presented in the form of animation because no variable found to be controlled. The process skills analysis detect four notable skills to be developed that are ability to observe, design experiment, interpretation, and communication skills.

HOT Faults", Fault Organization, and the Occurrence of the Largest Earthquakes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carlson, J. M.; Hillers, G.; Archuleta, R. J.

2006-12-01

We apply the concept of "Highly Optimized Tolerance" (HOT) for the investigation of spatio-temporal seismicity evolution, in particular mechanisms associated with largest earthquakes. HOT provides a framework for investigating both qualitative and quantitative features of complex feedback systems that are far from equilibrium and punctuated by rare, catastrophic events. In HOT, robustness trade-offs lead to complexity and power laws in systems that are coupled to evolving environments. HOT was originally inspired by biology and engineering, where systems are internally very highly structured, through biological evolution or deliberate design, and perform in an optimum manner despite fluctuations in their surroundings. Though faults and fault systems are not designed in ways comparable to biological and engineered structures, feedback processes are responsible in a conceptually comparable way for the development, evolution and maintenance of younger fault structures and primary slip surfaces of mature faults, respectively. Hence, in geophysical applications the "optimization" approach is perhaps more aptly replaced by "organization", reflecting the distinction between HOT and random, disorganized configurations, and highlighting the importance of structured interdependencies that evolve via feedback among and between different spatial and temporal scales. Expressed in the terminology of the HOT concept, mature faults represent a configuration optimally organized for the release of strain energy; whereas immature, more heterogeneous fault networks represent intermittent, suboptimal systems that are regularized towards structural simplicity and the ability to generate large earthquakes more easily. We discuss fault structure and associated seismic response pattern within the HOT concept, and outline fundamental differences between this novel interpretation to more orthodox viewpoints like the criticality concept. The discussion is flanked by numerical simulations of a 2D fault model, where we investigate different feedback mechanisms and their effect on seismicity evolution. We introduce an approach to estimate the state of a fault and thus its capability of generating a large (system-wide) event assuming likely heterogeneous distributions of hypocenters and stresses, respectively.

Examining the similarities and differences of OMERACT core sets using the ICF: first step towards an improved domain specification and development of an item pool to measure functioning and health.

PubMed

Escorpizo, Reuben; Boers, Maarten; Stucki, Gerold; Boonen, Annelies

2011-08-01

To contribute to the discussion on a common approach for domain selection in the Outcomes in Rheumatology Clinical Trials (OMERACT) process. First, this article reports on the consistency in the selection and names of the domains of the current OMERACT core set, and next on the comparability of the specifications of concepts that are relevant within the domains. For this purpose, a convenience sample of 4 OMERACT core sets was used: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA), longitudinal observational studies (LOS) in rheumatology, and ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Domains from the different core sets were compared directly. To be able to compare the specific content of the domains, the concepts contained in the questionnaires that were considered or proposed to measure the domains were identified and linked to the category of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) that best fit that construct. Large differences in the domains, and lack of domain definitions, were noted among the 4 OMERACT core sets. When comparing the concepts in the questionnaires that represent the domains, core sets differed also in the number and type of constructs that were addressed within each of the domains. Especially for the specification of the concepts within the domains Discomfort and Disability, the ICF proved to be useful as external reference to classify the different constructs. Our exercise suggests that the OMERACT process could benefit from a standardized approach to select, define, and specify domains, and demonstrated that the ICF is useful for further classification of the more specific concepts of "what to measure" within the domains. A clear definition and classification of domains and their specification can be useful as a starting point to build a pool of items that could then be used to develop new instruments to assess functioning and health for rheumatological conditions.

R-CMap-An open-source software for concept mapping.

PubMed

Bar, Haim; Mentch, Lucas

2017-02-01

Planning and evaluating projects often involves input from many stakeholders. Fusing and organizing many different ideas, opinions, and interpretations into a coherent and acceptable plan or project evaluation is challenging. This is especially true when seeking contributions from a large number of participants, especially when not all can participate in group discussions, or when some prefer to contribute their perspectives anonymously. One of the major breakthroughs in the area of evaluation and program planning has been the use of graphical tools to represent the brainstorming process. This provides a quantitative framework for organizing ideas and general concepts into simple-to-interpret graphs. We developed a new, open-source concept mapping software called R-CMap, which is implemented in R. This software provides a graphical user interface to guide users through the analytical process of concept mapping. The R-CMap software allows users to generate a variety of plots, including cluster maps, point rating and cluster rating maps, as well as pattern matching and go-zone plots. Additionally, R-CMap is capable of generating detailed reports that contain useful statistical summaries of the data. The plots and reports can be embedded in Microsoft Office tools such as Word and PowerPoint, where users may manually adjust various plot and table features to achieve the best visual results in their presentations and official reports. The graphical user interface of R-CMap allows users to define cluster names, change the number of clusters, select rating variables for relevant plots, and importantly, select subsets of respondents by demographic criteria. The latter is particularly useful to project managers in order to identify different patterns of preferences by subpopulations. R-CMap is user-friendly, and does not require any programming experience. However, proficient R users can add to its functionality by directly accessing built-in functions in R and sharing new features with the concept mapping community. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Moral concepts set decision strategies to abstract values.

PubMed

Caspers, Svenja; Heim, Stefan; Lucas, Marc G; Stephan, Egon; Fischer, Lorenz; Amunts, Katrin; Zilles, Karl

2011-04-01

Persons have different value preferences. Neuroimaging studies where value-based decisions in actual conflict situations were investigated suggest an important role of prefrontal and cingulate brain regions. General preferences, however, reflect a superordinate moral concept independent of actual situations as proposed in psychological and socioeconomic research. Here, the specific brain response would be influenced by abstract value systems and moral concepts. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying such responses are largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a forced-choice paradigm on word pairs representing abstract values, we show that the brain handles such decisions depending on the person's superordinate moral concept. Persons with a predominant collectivistic (altruistic) value system applied a "balancing and weighing" strategy, recruiting brain regions of rostral inferior and intraparietal, and midcingulate and frontal cortex. Conversely, subjects with mainly individualistic (egocentric) value preferences applied a "fight-and-flight" strategy by recruiting the left amygdala. Finally, if subjects experience a value conflict when rejecting an alternative congruent to their own predominant value preference, comparable brain regions are activated as found in actual moral dilemma situations, i.e., midcingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results demonstrate that superordinate moral concepts influence the strategy and the neural mechanisms in decision processes, independent of actual situations, showing that decisions are based on general neural principles. These findings provide a novel perspective to future sociological and economic research as well as to the analysis of social relations by focusing on abstract value systems as triggers of specific brain responses.

Moral Concepts Set Decision Strategies to Abstract Values

PubMed Central

Caspers, Svenja; Heim, Stefan; Lucas, Marc G.; Stephan, Egon; Fischer, Lorenz; Amunts, Katrin; Zilles, Karl

2011-01-01

Persons have different value preferences. Neuroimaging studies where value-based decisions in actual conflict situations were investigated suggest an important role of prefrontal and cingulate brain regions. General preferences, however, reflect a superordinate moral concept independent of actual situations as proposed in psychological and socioeconomic research. Here, the specific brain response would be influenced by abstract value systems and moral concepts. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying such responses are largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a forced-choice paradigm on word pairs representing abstract values, we show that the brain handles such decisions depending on the person's superordinate moral concept. Persons with a predominant collectivistic (altruistic) value system applied a “balancing and weighing” strategy, recruiting brain regions of rostral inferior and intraparietal, and midcingulate and frontal cortex. Conversely, subjects with mainly individualistic (egocentric) value preferences applied a “fight-and-flight” strategy by recruiting the left amygdala. Finally, if subjects experience a value conflict when rejecting an alternative congruent to their own predominant value preference, comparable brain regions are activated as found in actual moral dilemma situations, i.e., midcingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results demonstrate that superordinate moral concepts influence the strategy and the neural mechanisms in decision processes, independent of actual situations, showing that decisions are based on general neural principles. These findings provide a novel perspective to future sociological and economic research as well as to the analysis of social relations by focusing on abstract value systems as triggers of specific brain responses. PMID:21483767